


When to Walk Away

by IntrovertedWife



Series: My Love [7]
Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Angst, Awkwardness, DA2 spoilers, Dragon Age: Inquisition Spoilers, F/M, Flashbacks, Healing, Heartache, Heartbreak, Heartbreaking, Kirkwall (Dragon Age), Nudity, POV Third Person, POV Third Person Limited, Post-Dragon Age II, Post-Dragon Age: Inquisition, Some Humor, Unrequited Crush, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-16
Updated: 2017-03-14
Packaged: 2018-09-24 20:01:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 38,348
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9783659
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IntrovertedWife/pseuds/IntrovertedWife
Summary: Fenris arrives on Hawke's doorstep injured and near death. It's been nearly seven years since he last saw her after the chantry exploded. While she tends to him, he comes to realize that he never moved on from the relationship they nearly had all those years ago. This may be the last chance Fenris has to rekindle those old feelings he ran from.This is the same Hawke in My Love series. It covers a bit about the mess of Fenris running out on her during the events of 2, and then what happened to Hawke after Inquisition.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LadyGoat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyGoat/gifts), [nlans](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nlans/gifts), [Space_aged](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Space_aged/gifts), [kelseyr713](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kelseyr713/gifts).



He had no other option.

Hand pressed tight against his tattered flesh, he barely felt the ice pelting his exposed skin and head. Even the hot blood gurgling through his fingers and down the black armor didn't register. He needed to get out of the elements soon, but a ringing reverberated through his skull leaving him impotent before the door. It looked like every other smaller home on the outskirts of Kirkwall; grey door without a family crest upon it, gravel walkups instead of cobbles, and a window box suspended above him. Dead grasses strained off the edge like a brown waterfall stretching for the ground.

He shouldn't be here.

Pain bashed into his side, his vision searing white like lit lyrium.

Lifting the fist not coated in his own blood, he knocked once. Just once. If it wasn't heard then it wasn't meant to be. In truth, he didn't want her to hear it, to have to speak something to her, to find an excuse or apology. Over the pounding of the storm, it was unlikely that any would hear or see him until it passed.

A disturbingly comforting thought.

To die alone, unknown, after all the chaos sewn in his wake. Nothing more than a thin body discovered frozen to the ground. Perhaps that was what he truly deserved from the Maker's hand.

Creaking snapped his head up, the fog of death fading as the door pulled back. She looked exactly how he remembered her. Taller than him, taller than most humans he knew, her crimson robe barely made it past her thighs. His hung head caught a pair of slippers in pink that bore a resemblance to nugs wiggling where her feet should be. Some things never changed. Wiping a hand over her striking grey eyes as if in disbelief, Hawke bellowed, "Fenris?"

"Sorry," he stuttered, his voice stumbling through its usual gravel, "if I'm disturbing you..." Fenris tried to slide back as if he was capable of leaving, as if he wasn't going to bleed out on her stoop.

Hawke's brash but tender hand lashed out. Through the freezing ice her warmth pressed against his wrist and tugged him out of the storm.

"Disturbing? You're not disturbing anything," Hawke laughed, that familiar bray that trailed his dreams echoing through her house. "Just shocked out of my mind to open my door in the middle of death storm 14 and find you standing there. It's been, what? Six, seven years since you took to chopping up slavers in Tevinter."

In the time it took him to say yes, Hawke spit all of that out. She was a constant barrage that couldn't even be bested by Varric's crossbow in terms of velocity. For anyone else, Fenris would groan and shuffle deeper inside himself. For Hawke, he clung tighter to the unbendable arm supporting him.

"I need your help," he said. Perhaps it was the blood trail he left, or the long walk through an ice rain, but Fenris was entranced with Hawke's eye roll.

"Here I was dead certain you just stopped by for some pie and a chat. Let me think where I left my good broadsword..." She broke off from holding him, no doubt to pick up a rug and find an armory stashed below it. Fenris' body folded inward and, without anything to support it, he began to sink to the floor. Reacting quickly, Hawke all but scooped her arms around him, holding him up with an awkward hug. "Fenris...?"

"I am injured," he said, his eyes guiltily drawing down to where his blood soaked into her robe's arm.

"Maker's hairy taint," Hawke cursed. Wrapping her arm around his back, she helped to guide him towards a low table. It took little from the giantess Champion to lift him onto it. "Stay here, my kit's in the other room," Hawke said, dashing out. Sounds of rummaging through drawers were punctuated by, "And for the love of Andraste, don't die or anything."

He could have. Fenris wasn't even supposed to be here. A slave master slipped out of their net and while he should have sent any one of his lieutenants, even an entire group after him, he went himself. Foolish. He didn't need to come. The others would have been better prepared and not walked into such an obvious trap.

But the moment he heard the word Kirkwall his course was set.

Hawke returned, a bag overflowing with bandages and clanking with bottles in her hands. She dropped it onto the table and removed a sash stabbed with various sized needles. "You're in luck, I just got a fresh sting of catgut cause you can never have too much catgut, right? Can I...?" Her hand gestured towards Fenris' side and he reached to slip off the breastplate. Exhaustion and blood loss claimed him, his hands thudding to the table.

"Don't worry, I can get it," Hawke said, the woman making quick work to pry off the armor he'd worn for nearly two decades now. While she stripped him fast, she was careful to lay it down where it wouldn't be damaged. Whistling under her breath, Hawke muttered to herself, "Great lich balls, how in the Maker's name are you still standing?"

He didn't answer, only grunted. Not that she was looking for a response. Fenris didn't need to see the wound to know it was bad. He was there when the blade trap swung towards him. Spinning on his feet, his sword flew to dice it apart but he wasn't quick enough and a single tooth off a giant saw crushed deep into his side. If he died here, then...it seemed the better answer than anywhere in Tevinter.

But Hawke wasn't about to let that happen. She dipped a rag in some bottle, then pressed the ointment tight to the wound. It hissed in anger, pain radiating up through Fenris' skin and bone until it knocked against his brain. He wanted to scream, to curse in every language he'd learned, but something stayed his voice.

Soft and barely even breaking above a whisper, Hawke began to sing. She hummed some of the words, losing the melody while running her warm fingers against his skin. "Up from the ground, ten darkspawn rose. Save your mother. Save your father. Run around, run around, down another goes." She whistled and sang the tune as if it was nothing more than another bawdy song for the tavern, her face almost jolly while threading a needle.

Fenris bit on his lip, not from his flesh being knit together with string but the memories in his brain being strung like a lute. While he lay back on the table, the silly song rumbling in his baritone, he drifted back to the first time he had to ask Hawke for her healing touch.

 

* * *

 

Beating a fist into the flimsy door, Fenris glanced around the squalor of Lowtown. A woman had tried to proposition him twice even as he left a clear trail of blood in his wake. Perhaps she was low on her quota for the month. This was embarrassing; a minor matter that he wished could be fixed on his own, but... What were the chances this woman would even help again. She assisted in his chase for Danarius, but that was for coin, which was all anyone ran on here. Why would she help now?

Fenris lifted his fist, about to knock one last time, when the door rattled open and that angular face opened wide in surprise. With skin darker than his own, she stood out against the paler sorts in Kirkwall, though a lot of that could also be due to the imposing height. Hawke turned her pointed chin down, her puffy lips pulled back into a smile.

_Why was that woman always smiling?_

"Hey, it's you. The elf from the alienage. Well, the special elf from the alienage. Not 'special' special, more the glowy fisty kind of special. Though, I guess you were originally from Tevinter so..."

"Yes," he interrupted, growing tired of the blood sloshing against his backside, "It is me, Fenris."

"I know. I'm good with names. Also punching things. What do you need? The naming or the punching?" She lifted her fist and pretended to attack the air.

Scowling, he said, "Neither. I require your help with a small matter."

"Sure," she shrugged, then blinked a moment as he froze up. "Oh, sorry, come in. Everyone in Ferelden was always barging in wherever they felt like it. I don't think we ever closed the door in Lothering unless it was raining or it was stink bug season." Her constant spray of words kept up even as she stepped aside to let him into her hovel.

He didn't know much about the random woman Anso found beyond her name and skill in matters less than savory, but as Fenris gazed around the dilapidated shack he felt a moment of pity. Barely large enough to support one person and supposedly it held four. Yet she never complained about it, at least that he ever heard. The woman was almost always smiles and laughs. It was maddening.

Limping into the middle room, Fenris drew a hand down behind himself and felt the familiar wet and sticky stain he'd tried to stymie himself five times. Hawke crossed her arms and tipped her head while staring down at him, "So, what seems to be the problem?"

"I..." It was difficult to speak with her always staring the way she did. The woman was more of a presence than the ten foot tall statues in the Gallows. She sucked up all the air in the room without trying, her piercing grey eyes biting through his skin as if she could plunge down to his marrow. "I am injured, in a place I cannot tend to."

"Okay," Hawke nodded, then she flinched. "You want me to fix it up? Uh, have you tried any healers? They're rather known for fixing people up."

"No!" Fenris shouted, unable to hide the revulsion at what he'd have to expose of himself to a mage. "I don't have the coin to afford one," he explained instead, then blanched. If he had no coin for a healer, then what would he pay her? Surely she was about to realize that fact and toss him out.

"We happen to know a healer that doesn't charge..." at his glare, Hawke held up her hands and a slow chuckle broke, "all right. Forget I said anything. Where is it?"

"It..." Take him, but a blush rampaged up his skin at having to voice the fact. Why couldn't Hawke be a man? That would make this all much simpler. No, instead he had those grey storm eyes peering down at him, her lips drawn into a full smile while she leaned back and forth upon a curvy hip. It was a simple pose, nothing feminine to it, but Fenris' lip zipped up tighter.

"Well, either you can tell me, I can strip all your clothes off and look myself, or I just wrap you up in every bandage I own Nevarran dead style."

"My backside," he spat out. "It is upon my backside. A trio of bandits in the dead of night in a dark alley."

She didn't laugh at him, only dropped a hand out of the cross over her chest, and scratched her chin. "Don't tell me, little bastard nicked you from behind like the cowards they are. Shits here are masters at shivs but won't take ya head on. It's all, stab stab, slit your hamstrings like." Caring little for the fact they were indoors, Hawke spat upon the floor to seal her thoughts on the Free Marcher muggers.

"Come on," she tipped her head, "there's a back room where you can lay down and I'll take a look. Got some bandages in this place courtesy of Aveline thinking I'm always gonna crack my skull open."

Hawke's hand moved to wrap around Fenris but he yanked it away fast. She barely blinked at his reaction, her chapped fingers shoving open a plywood door. An even more pathetic room than the first lay ahead of him. Half of a fire puffed out acrid smoke while a stand of rusted pans waited beside. Stretched across a pair of no doubt stolen cinderblocks was a piece of wood that appeared to have once been the hull of a ship. With a wave of her hand, Hawke knocked off what'd been on their kitchen table and smiled.

"This'll have to do, sorry it's not any cleaner. The maid only comes in on Tuesday."

There was a great chance he'd catch some blood disease merely by laying upon that rotted piece of wood, but... Fenris' hand cupped the ass cheek that'd been weeping for over a day now. He had no other option. Scurrying with all the lagging dignity he had, he pressed his stomach upon the table and stretched out. Hawke stood at the front beside his face and stared down in concentration.

"You're, uh, gonna have to take the pants part off. Unless you want me to sew them to your skin."

 _Fenheedis_! The woman was beyond maddening. Trying to shake off the unnerving feeling squatting in his gut, Fenris unbolted the latch upon his trousers and slowly trailed them down to expose himself to the elements...and her. Hawke clipped back to his backside, a finger tapping against her lips until she vanished out of his periphery.

"Not great. The wound, I mean. The rest is...you sure you don't want a healer?" she asked.

"Yes," Fenris screwed up his eyes, wishing this was all over. He'd thought about burrowing into a bottle of wine before attempting the task of asking for her help but feared it would only speed up his bleeding.

"Okay, gonna have to use the needle though. It's deep. Not surprised you're having troubles." He felt a bag land upon the table beside him followed by sounds of rummaging. Gritting his teeth, Fenris screwed up his courage not for the bite of a needle but the breeze lancing against such an intimate part of him. No one had seen so much of him since... Fenris had no idea. Even in the depths of summer when he was forced to bathe in streams on his quest for vengeance he kept a shirt on, unable and unwilling to face the lyrium etched into his skin. The idea of letting anyone else see stirred up his blood until it ran hot.

"This might sting a bit, or a lot. Sorry, not a lot of numbing draughts here to take away the pain," Hawke's voice trilled from behind, the smile never wavering. "Gamlen might have something, though there's a good chance you'll shed those silver locks if you drink it."

"Stitch it up," Fenris ordered, then he winced at the bite in his voice. "Please."

"Okay," Hawke didn't waver from his venom, always cheery. Something warm pressed against the top of his tailbone and Fenris flinched away from it. His body shifted almost uncontrollably from her. "You're gonna need to hold still, unless you want a wicked scar. Though it'd be hard to charm free drinks with that one, unless you're really trying to charm the ladies with it."

"I..." Fenris gritted his teeth, trying to calm the pounding below his skin, "I will."

Before he could find a foothold, the hand returned, pressing even tighter to his skin. Agony, as if the flesh was burning, ripped through him. Still, Fenris clung tight to the table; his fingernails clawing apart the cheap wood while the hand rested almost chastely on his ass.

"Um..." Hawke's voice showed the first sign of trepidation since he entered her home, "you're glowing."

"What?" Fenris stared down at himself to find the lyrium lit up across his skin brighter than any beacon.

"If you don't want me to do this..." Hawke stumbled away, the hand lifting from his skin.

The moment the contact broke, he was able to control himself, the glow fading along with his powers. "Wait," Fenris croaked, whipping his head around. For the first time since meeting her, he didn't find a smile upon Hawke's lips. She was staring at her fingers as if they'd committed some horrible atrocity she couldn't understand.

"I...do not enjoy being touched," Fenris tried to explain, the burr in his stomach expanding. Why wasn't she smiling? She was always smiling. "Any and all, but, I would like your help. Please."

Hawke's face rose and she nodded once, those sheer cheekbones lifting to reform her smile. Its return lightened Fenris, if only because he couldn't be at blame for dousing it. "I can try to sew it up without touching you much, but the flesh will need to be pushed together."

Nodding, Fenris returned to glaring at the door, "I shall control myself. Do your best."

A pinprick bit into his skin, but no hand pressed against him. The first stitch popped into place, realigning what the bandits severed, but there were a good dozen or so more to go. If there was a mirror and he could see what was going on, then he could prepare himself. Instead, it was a guessing game, leaving him on edge for the next stab through his already bruised and battered flesh. Out of nowhere, Hawke began to sing, the melody a simple tune and Hawke's voice more impressive for its volume than tone. She was not a woman one would ever call dainty.

"Up from the ground, ten darkspawn rose. Grab your sword. Grab your hoe. Run around, run around, down another goes. Up from the ground, nine darkspawn rose..." Hawke's song faded a moment as he heard teeth biting into string. "Do you know that song, Fenris?"

"No," he answered, uncertain if she was even listening. Flexing his fingers out, he tried to find anything else to distract himself.

"We learned it in the village. I can't remember which one, further north than Lothering long before we settled there. A kid was always on and on about how the big, scary darkspawn were gonna gobble us up. Or maybe it was one of the farmers pissed we swiped his apples."

She kept up her babble even while the needle broke his skin. Every attempt by Fenris to focus and prepare for the jab was broken apart by the incessant speaking and then more song. He couldn't even hear his internal thoughts over Hawke's singing.

"Up from the ground, eight darkspawn rose. Save your mother. Save your father..." something brushed over his skin, and he clenched his teeth. "Come on, at least sing along with me," Hawke ordered.

"I do not know it," Fenris gasped. Did she not realize that bare assed and stretched across a filthy table while being stitched back together was not the time for anyone to wish to sing an insipid song about darkspawn?

"It's easy. See, first there are ten darkspawn, then nine, then eight and so on and so forth," Hawke's voice wandered up and down in thought. "Think it was a song to teach us about counting? I hated those."

"I don't understand." Despite the pain searing through his skin and a rising fear he might damage Hawke or her possessions if he lost control something in her tone drew his curiosity.

"Teaching songs, like 'hey kids, let's go over the letters of the alphabet but set it to music so you'll yap it out like a trained mabari.' Or 'noun noun verb verbing adjective noun!' Maker, my mother loved those. She could be a real grammarspawn sometimes."

"I never heard any of those," Fenris whispered, his voice fading into his stomach. It dipped so low he doubted Hawke even heard him.

"Well, I'll have to teach you the next time you need a quick sew up," she chuckled, sliding around to his face.

"You're done?" Fenris peered over his shoulder to find a small knot of catgut gleaming upon the crest of his asscheek. He had barely felt her hands upon him, those confusing words drawing his full attention instead of... Unaware of the elf staring in surprise, Hawke was busy wiping her hands clean off on a towel. She appeared to all the world like a simple minded but kind hearted ruffian. More biceps than brains as people would say. Fenris didn't look much past the surface because he had no need to. And yet she was the first person to ever touch him without leaving any pain behind.

"It'll sting for a few days, need to take the stitches out in a week or so, ifn' I remember right. Been a few years since I had to knot up myself," Hawke cracked a smile and drew a finger across her arm. "Took a blade here."

"From the darkspawn?"

"Nah, was my shit weasel brother," she smiled wide, but her eyes wavered at the edges as if tears wanted to spring free. "He was always swinging wide when he shoulda kept it tight."

Despite his ass remaining exposed to the world, Fenris began to reach over to try and console Hawke. His fingers were nearly upon her forearm when he realized he had no idea what to do. He'd never even felt the urge to comfort someone before. Panic setting in, he was saved by the sound of the front door opening.

"Love, we're back," an elder woman's voice called from the living room.

"You still here, Sis?" another much younger voice asked. "If she's going to head out to make more coin, she should leave a note."

Hawke smiled at Fenris, "My mother and sister, I'll go and talk to 'em while you get yer drawers back on." Her grin didn't waver a moment at the idiocy before her. Cracking the door open a sliver, Hawke oozed out to obscure him. She greeted her mother by asking what all they got up to that day, then proceeded to tell them there was a guest in the other room.

"What sort of guest?" her mother asked straight away. Did Hawke often bring various men home? Fenris snarled at himself for wondering. He had no reason to care. Scurrying quickly, he hitched up his pants and moved to knot back on the belt.

Hawke chuckled and without any hint of subterfuge bellowed, "A friend who needed help."

Friend? No one had called Fenris that in as long as he could remember. They barely knew each other beyond a few exchanged words. "He got nicked and I stitched him up, no problem."

"He's hurt? Perhaps I could help," the sister's voice broke. Fenris remembered her from the night. Bethany. She was the exact opposite of Hawke in every way. A soft, pliant voice to match her dainty form. While Hawke towered above nearly everyone, Bethany skirted below chins, her curves softened by the mage robes.

"Ah," Hawke seemed to intercept her sister, "no need, Bethy. He's good."

"Good? After the assistance of your healing skills? Remember when father would pound his face into his palms every time you attempted to use spit?"

Fenris' eyes shot open wide and he tried to spin around to look, as if that would reveal any spittle clinging to his wound.

"I was ten," Hawke shouted, "and learning. Look..." Sounds of people scuttling closer to the door drew Fenris nearer as well. In a whisper that he thought Hawke incapable of, she said, "it's the elf from the alienage that then turned into a Hightown job. The one who's not too keen on mages."

"Oh," Bethany's effervescent tone froze, "him."

"And the wound wasn't in a very, um, polite place on his body."

"Polite? What are you talking about?" she gasped. Hawke couldn't possibly tell her the full of it. Bethany seemed to be a very sheltered girl who'd most likely blush herself to death at hearing such crass things.

"It's on his bum," Hawke said in the same voice that sang the song about darkspawn.

 _For the love of the Maker!_ Fenris smacked his forehead against the door, which neither of the women noticed.

Bethany squealed at the impropriety of it, then whispered, "His..bottom? You, you got to see his bottom area?"

"Yeah," Hawke spoke slowly as if she was afraid her sister wouldn't understand, "Kinda had to, not a lot of people want their doctor to stitch 'em up blind. Touched it to."

"How was it?" the sister pried in a voice that sounded as if it was escaping from behind her fingers.

Laying his ear tight to the door, Fenris held his breath. This was foolish. It didn't matter what her opinion was, merely that she was willing to assist him. He should throw open the door and leave.

"It's a good one," Hawke said with such clarity he felt his legs twitch. "Nice and firm, high up too. Shame he hides it behind all the pointy bits."

"Do, the uh," Bethany giggled a moment, "tattoos go all the way down?"

Blood rushed through Fenris' ears, a foreign sensation prickling against the lyrium tattoos upon his skin. It was almost as if they were itching, but no amount of scratching could dim the horrible feeling. Trying to stave off any more of the uncomfortable sting, Fenris yanked open the door. Bethany's big brown eyes opened in shock, but Hawke only smiled wide.

"Hey, you're up. Good to see I didn't accidentally chop off a leg," she said the last sentence at her sister who was too busy burying her face in her hands to answer back.

"How much do you require for payment?" Fenris spat out, unable to stare up at her save through the fringe of his hair.

"Payment?" Hawke snorted. "Don't be silly. Friends don't pay."

There it was again. Friend. She couldn't be serious. It was either some trap, or perhaps she was trying to save face in front of her mother. A way to excuse this unknown man laying bare assed upon their kitchen table. Nodding, Fenris slid towards the front door, doing his best to keep his backside out of sight of the three women. Out the open door, he paused and glanced back inside. "Thank you for your help. If you ever have need, you know where to find me."

"Sure," Hawke smiled, a hand waving to him, "and Fenris...you can come by anytime you want. You don't even have to have been stabbed."

His head bouncing, Fenris slammed the door. Through the thundering of blood in his ears, Hawke's voice echoed two words like the waves pounding against rocks: friend and firm.


	2. Lesson Learned

Hawke snipped off the end of the suture with a tiny pair of scissors instead of her teeth. Leaning upon his elbows, Fenris watched through bleary eyes the entire time she tended to his wound. Her movements were more methodical than he anticipated, or remembered, as if a small voice in her head was reminding her of every step needed. Was it experience or...?

Shaking off the thought, when Hawke picked up the bag, Fenris moved to slide his feet to the ground. Her smile faded a moment, before snapping back brighter than ever, "What in Andraste's name do you think you're doing?"

"Leaving," he grunted, then flinched at his callow answer.

If Hawke cared about the barb, she didn't let on. Her hand landed upon his shoulder, the full might of the Champion pinning him down. "By Mafarath's infected toe you are. I ain't even bandaged you up. Look, there's still blood and pus oozing out of the hole." She jabbed towards the wound but didn't touch it. Fenris swung his head up from watching the macabre display and found himself a breath away from those stormy grey eyes.

His entire body went rigid, all the heat draining from his limbs to pipe awake the cheeks for a bright burn. Hawke blinked a moment, her lips settling open as if a million thoughts were about to tumble free. But she clung to silence instead, her hand lifting off of his shoulder so she could yank out yards of muslin.

"This isn't necessary," Fenris continued, even while sitting up and extending his arms. Able to act as if there was nothing strange at all about it, Hawke wrapped his torso in the cloth, her cheek almost glancing across the tattoo dipping down his third rib. He watched transfixed at how the warm brown skin kept bobbing close and far, Fenris realizing he was gritting his teeth in anticipation. But was it out of fear of her touching him, or because he hoped for it?

The thought shook him from his stupor, "Thank you for your help, but I don't...I have disturbed you long enough."

"Disturbed? You didn't even bring an accordion with you. Now, get a trio of barking nugs and a harmonica then I might have to toss you out on your ear."

Her smile didn't waver, cracked lips lifted wide. There were new scars to match the old, what looked like a partially fresh one undulating with her bottom lip. Another long since healed scar was gashed over her forehead. Why was Hawke not properly healed? She should have been taken care of, at least by _him._

"I don't wish to bother you or..." Fenris' eyes burned through the air, "anyone else here."

"Anyone...?" Hawke's smile climbed in uncertainty when it fell like a rock, "Oh. That anyone. Well, you're in luck 'cause he ain't here. Be right damn stupid to let him anywhere near Kirkwall, in fact."

"With the rebellion over, I thought," Fenris tried to look around the house anew. It was plainer than the Amell mansion she'd lived in prior, but homier than Gamlen's hovel. Swords hung upon the mantle, not the kind formed from precious metals and jewels, but a favored one leftover from an old battle in a place close by should the inevitable happen. Paintings not of famous faces he couldn't recognize but familiar ones out of Hawke's past graced the walls. All were known to him save a small dark skinned woman in mage robes. He assumed at first it was Bethany, but the woman's face was more rounded, with a fire in her eyes the painter captured that must be terrifying to see in real life. A few tables filled the empty spaces beside walls. There was even a fruit bowl, though being Hawke's it was stuffed with daggers and what looked like uncut jewels. The place was lived in, cosy without being claustrophobic.

Hawke snatched up a handful of pins off a cushion and jammed two in her mouth. Carefully binding together the bandages, she said through the pricks, "Yeah, you'd think lots of stuff woulda changed with that finished. But, people are still people, ya know. Once a right bastard, always a right bastard. Anyway, I ain't letting you leave, not in this condition, and not with that condition out there."

"You think you can stop me?" Fenris said, his words hollow.

She paused in her work and stood up tall. With a single extension of her elbow Hawke prodded a finger against his shoulder. He tried to fight against it, but pain seized up and down his side and his body rocked backwards. "That answer your question? Friends don't let friends head out into ice storms while their organs are being held inside with spit and glue. Fancy metaphorical I mean, I don't spit in it."

Her spiel paused and she stared almost impishly into his eyes. It looked as if she didn't want him to leave. "Then I will stay. To limit your worrying."

"Good," Hawke gasped in relief, either playing the part or honestly fearing he would attempt to barrel through her for the door. "That table's about as cozy as crawling inside a ditch. There's a bed upstairs that'll do you up better."

Fenris guided his feet to the ground, while Hawke assisted. "You speak from experience?" he asked as the pair shifted together up a small flight of stairs that grew astronomical from the pain gouging into him. Not answering, Hawke only shrugged, but he caught a sly smile from a no doubt legendary night that ended in the Champion of Kirkwall sleeping upon her own table.

A silence thudded between them. While Fenris preferred the cloak of solitude, at the moment the emptiness beat its fists upon his skull. No doubt because of the rarity of a quiet Hawke.

"Your hair," he fumbled for anything to say.

"Oh yeah, got hit by some acid spraying monster. Think it was a sea dragon, or some relative there of. Stank of wyvern like no other, but with fishy scaley bits. Had to shave all the damage off, and then kinda came to like it." Flipping her free hand over the dangling sides of the remaining hair, Hawke shrugged with her cheeky grin.

Beautiful in the way a volcano or tornado was, Hawke was a presence that burst through your life unexpectedly, often leaving debris and scars in its wake, but a strange smile in your heart. While no artist would ever ask her to sit for a portrait of a lady, it was impossible to take your eyes off of her. She commanded a room merely by walking into it. Fenris fell silent again, his tongue knotted up in the dozen compliments he wished to give while knowing that none would be welcome.

"Here it is, big fluffy bed with big fluffy pillows and probably a few blankets. Fluffiness is debatable for those," Hawke kicked open the door to the bedroom to reveal the exact same four poster bed she had in her mansion nearly a decade past. Even the drapery was the same, the years fading the crimson to a soft reddish pink. Memories flooded through Fenris as he gazed upon it. Fearing his lyrium would react, he shut his eyes tight and focused on the pain in his body instead of the wound to his soul.

As he lowered to the bed, Hawke fussed with getting the proper blanket to pillow ratio as if he hadn't spent his days sleeping on grass and rocks. Groaning, Fenris' side jabbed fresh pain through his lungs. He tried to shift to get the knot worked out, when Hawke's fingers darted through his hair. Tenderly, she massaged upon the only part of him that didn't rear back from touch.

Was she even aware she was doing it? His eyes slowly closed, the methodical tug of hair soothing Fenris. He wanted to pin her hand to him, to tell her she need not sing that silly song to touch him, that she was the only one who could. "Is this your bed?" he said instead, his eyes focusing upon her.

"Don't go worrying about me, or where I'll sleep. I've got a few options available in this place. There's a fancy stuffed chair out of the Anderfels, says it's loaded with griffin down. And if worst comes to it I have a bit of an in with the new owner of the Hanged Man. Or I could always crash on the Viscount's couch when he's not looking," Hawke winked as if Varric wouldn't put her up proper with silk sheets and breakfast in the morning. Perhaps she didn't think Fenris knew about the dwarf's rise in political power. They hadn't spoken in...many years.

"Sleep," Hawke ordered, "heal, and stop oozing everywhere. If you need anything, just throw something at the wall. I'll hear it out there and come find ya." Having said her peace, she nodded and shuffled towards the door. Still as magnificent as ever, Hawke had to stoop to slide under the frame.

"Thank you," Fenris gasped out. He had to say it now in person. Every attempt to send a letter ended in him burning the parchment, certain that it would be unwelcome or unread.

"Ain't no problem. Friends are always welcome," Hawke smiled while tugging the door shut behind her.

Fenris twisted around in near sleep for what could have been hours or minutes. A haunting purple glow emanated off of what looked like a small carved bear, perhaps a toy given to her by...Varric. It seemed more his style than _him_. Aside from the count of his breaths, he had no idea how to measure the passage of time. Pain ebbed and flowed like the tide through his body, sometimes leaving long enough he could almost convince himself he may fall asleep. But then the memories returned. Hawke's fingers prying into his armor to electrify his skin with her touch. His hands tugging apart her robe to caress the breasts he'd tried so hard to not think about.

A different room, a different time, a different person, but the same damn bed.

Unable to sleep, Fenris stumbled to his feet. Pain lacerated his skin but he'd grown used to it; some days he barely even noticed unless one of the others in his group pointed out the blood. For a brief moment he wondered how they were getting on back in Tevinter without him. Who would have ever imagined he'd be in charge of a resistance? People looking to him for guidance, for answers, for a leader. He was no one's leader, no one's guide, certainly no one's friend.

Almost no one's friend.

By the bear's haunting violet stomach, he picked at books left sitting haphazardly in a bookshelf. Hawke seemed to approach the concept of organization by haphazardly placing anything she wanted off the ground onto shelves. Books were held in place between daggers, a cutting block shaped like a pig, and five boxes all labeled 'elfroot' with nothing inside. Fenris recognized some of the titles, there were more than a dozen copies of the same Hard in Hightown book. Perhaps the Viscount was having trouble moving them.

Past the shelf of Varric's extra curricular life, Fenris found a tome on knitting next to one on proper sword maintenance. Hawke would be the type to attempt both, perhaps at the same time. His fingers flitted past hobby books, cookbooks, instruction manuals on random matters, even a tax code for Orlais, before he paused upon a strikingly familiar title.

"Wanderer's Trails" was thin compared to the rest, perhaps a hundred pages long in a once blue binding that faded until it...it matched her eyes. Fenris tugged it off the shelf and the book fell open in his fingers, right back to the very sentence where they'd left off.

 

* * *

  

The knocking against the manor's door was so furious dust rained down off a shelf above him. He glowered first at the filth coated bottles tipping over, then over the railing towards the front door. Whoever was behind it wasn't about to give up. Fenris rarely received visitors to the home he stole out from under Danarius; most attention came in the form of solicitors trying to tempt him with guaranteed real Rivani rugs or charms enchanted to repel demons that were clearly cheap tin. On occasion a few of the chantry tried, thinking they could garner tithes from the wealthy section of Kirkwall but one glance at his glower and pointy ears and they ran back to their sanctuary without looking back.

Fenris stopped answering the door unless he was expecting someone. But whoever was outside either had no intentions of leaving until he approached or the wood collapsed from the pounding allowing entrance. Accepting his fate, he padded down the stairs barely glancing at stains that over the years merged into the stone. By the time he thought to try and clean some of the blood out, it was far too late. After awhile, he simply stopped caring. Perhaps there was some special maintenance required for keeping a manor in shape, but aside from removing the bodies for the sake of the smell and disease, the ex-slave saw no point. He'd rather live in squalor than polish up a grand estate built upon the bones of elves.

Fingers reaching out towards where he kept a sword stashed inside a stand by the entrance, Fenris opened the door a crack. A single grey eye set inside a brown face darted down to him and a burst of white broke free.

"Hawke," Fenris stumbled back, pulling open the door.

She wasn't in the typical traveling armor he'd normally see her wearing, nor the softer house outfit that others would mention and he'd on occasion spy Hawke in while walking the markets. This wasn't exactly a dress, nor was it pants. The long purple tunic frilled out thanks to a belt cinched tight to her midsection, but -- due to her height -- it barely made it past her mid-thigh. Hose were suckered to her legs, but they somehow made her seem more naked. Fenris blanched at the thought, a scowl slotting into place.

If she spotted it, Hawke made no mention. Instead, she smiled wide, "Fenris, it's been a few days. How are you? Good. You look good. Still growing tumbleweeds in here, eh? How are the mushrooms coming along in the bathroom? A few looked about right for picking."

He tried to speak, but sighed and shook his head. Sliding back, Fenris allowed Hawke entrance, as if he ever had any intentions of keeping her out. She was the one to help him secure the place after all. Nodding brusquely at his formality, Hawke's pinned up hair slipped out of bindings that looked torturous. Barely batting the mass away, she pointed at Fenris' hand.

"Planning on cutting me down if I didn't have the right password?"

He followed and sighed at the sword clutched in his fingers. Stuffing it back into the stand, he gruffed, "Most surprise visits are unwelcome."

"Oh, don't tell me the Blades of Hessarian have been hitting you up too? Bodahn bought like ten subscriptions off them before I could convince him it's a scam. Still, he has high hopes that Sandal will get some use out of the periodic serial 'How To Make Friends and Not Scare People.' I'll strip naked and run through the market square if anything they promised shows up."

"I..." Fenris blinked rapidly at the image she painted, his eyes darting down the straining neckline of her royal amethyst tunic. Whether Hawke meant to display such cleavage for effect or a mere happenstance of her fortress-like body not fitting inside it, his tongue dried out either way. "You came for some reason?"

"Yes," Hawke clasped her hands together, revealing a book in one as she begged, "please let me hide out here for a few hours."

"You don't need to ask," Fenris said, always grateful for her company. The woman was pulled in every direction; requirements of her station, Varric's various travels, Isabela's ideas of adventure, Aveline trying to knock a modicum of sense into her, whatever she did down in the abomination's miasmic clinic. And yet, she managed once a week to stop by Fenris' estate for a literary lesson. Though, those were always on Tuesdays and this being a Friday he wondered why she was here, but didn't require an explanation.

Hawke, being Hawke, felt the need to give one.

"I'd have messaged ahead, assuming you don't kill the messengers and then stuff their bodies in the walls," her eyes rolled around the ransacked manor but there was no vitriol there. She seemed to find it all hilarious, as Hawke did with near everything. "But I didn't realize what was going on until I was nearly to my door and spotted a tufted feather through the window."

"You need me to kill a bird in your house?" Fenris asked warily.

"No, no, no," Hawke chortled. "Unless that's a secret code I..." at his stoic expression she sighed, "probably not. Feather means someone fancy, someone fancy means high born overstuffed blah blah, high born means mother's gone off and found another suitor for me."

He didn't respond, his eyes glaring into the ground. It was unsurprising that the woman who gained back her family's title and fortune would be betrothed off to another wealthy inhabitant. That was what the noble houses did after all, breeding within each other to keep the blood sacred. Fenris scratched at the back of his neck, trying to flick away a hot sensation squatting there.

Hawke seemed unaware of his reaction, her arms animatedly slicing apart the air, "Course I turned on my heel and ran as quick as I could from that mess. Just how I want to spend my day -- sweaty palms, knocked knees staring into some droopy eyed face while doing my best to not say something stupid otherwise mother'll give me that glare she does. Though, that musta been why she insisted I put this thing on."

She picked at the stomach of her tunic, lifting the front of the hem's edge higher up her thighs. He tried to not burn a hole staring at the normally hidden flesh but Fenris was drawn in like a moth to a flame. Unaware of anything untoward, Hawke yanked it back down and said, "So I really need somewhere to hide where mother won't look. For a few hours. At least until the latest one's gotten bored and fled the coop."

It took a beat before he realized she was staring expectantly at him. A snarl echoed with his curt, "Stay." He meant it at himself for his mind caring a whit about Hawke's family life. There was no reason for his skin to itch as if it were infested with spiders at the idea of her being wed off to some chin-less noble who couldn't possibly appreciate what he had.

Hawke slammed the door behind her and jerked her chin up to where his room was, the question inside her movement. Nodding his head, Fenris trailed after the woman already waltzing towards the staircase. It wasn't until they were halfway up it that he trusted himself to speak without appearing too interested in the answer. "If you have no use for a suitor why not tell your mother to stop?"

"Spoken like a man who's never had to deal with the 'I was in labor with you for 47 hours. Would it really hurt you to wear this lovely pink skirt with all the ruffles?' motherly haranguing." Hawke laughed to herself, but paused a moment and those grey eyes skirted down at him. Swallowing, Fenris didn't do more to react to the state of his lacking family than slightly sneer. Hawke stampeded over the awkwardness quickly, "It also seems to make her happy. She can spend all her free time getting together with other mothers of damaged goods men who are stuck at home with no fertile prospects on the horizon. Who am I to go and ruin that?"

Three years had passed since Fenris first met Hawke on that dark, blood stained ground of the alienage. He kept waiting for her to vanish from his life, for the offer of friendship to cool until she'd only offer a cursory glance in the elf's direction. After the deep roads expedition her name meant something, even the Viscount would call upon Hawke for help. What use could she have with an ex-slave that tolerated people as well as he did a hand upon his bare arm?

Fenris wouldn't have thought anything of it, but the others often floated assumptions that once Hawke had her fancy house and wealth she'd probably settle down with another rich man. All except for Varric. The dwarf cracked, "That's a woman you can't tie down even if you nail her feet to the floor." While Fenris assumed the others would be correct, people often preferred security to the unknown, it was Varric who knew Hawke seemingly best of all.

"What if you chose your own suitor?" the words dribbled out of Fenris' mouth before his brain had time to mull them over.

Hawke froze upon the landing and turned over her shoulder to look at him. A solitary eyebrow shot straight up her forehead. "My mother'd curse up a storm for a week, calm down, then dive right into wedding planning. I bet the cake would be ten feet tall. The dress would somehow be nothing but ruffles and it'd take ten miles to walk the receiving line. Shame she got saddled with me though. Now Bethany..."

Her bubbly words crumbled at the mention of her sister. What few things broke through Hawke's effervescent shield stuck deep. The blame for Bethany being discovered by the templars never wore away. Shaking it off like a dog out of the rain, she smiled, "Bethany would have dozens of 'em all lining up out the door for her hand. Probably singing songs in the middle of the night to serenade the lady, flowers doffed along with hats."

 _What of you?_ Fenris had the decency to hold that thought in, but a dangerous silence permeated the air as Hawke stopped speaking.

Shaking her head, Hawke stood up tall. She never stooped, no matter if she was a head and a half above every man in the room. Never feigned being unable to hurl a drunkard through a window. Never held her tongue for anything, a trait she shared with Varric. She was a woman who lived her life her way, and it fascinated Fenris endlessly. The lack of pretense, of never having to fear he'd say the wrong word soothed him. Hawke was a blaring trumpet that never pretended to be a soft violin.

"Never mind all that romancey love stuff," she crinkled her nose and shook her head like a bee flew in her ear. "I brought us a new book to read." Lifting up the cover he spotted earlier, Hawke tapped it thrice as if it required a secret knock to open.

"What about Shartan?" Fenris asked. They'd been slowly working through it, Hawke sitting beside him to peer over his shoulder and sound out the words. He'd felt bitterly foolish at the pace, as if he were an old man being guided across a small stream, but Hawke never said a word against it. Some visits they'd only get a page done, perhaps two, but as time drew on he was often handling entire canticles without needing her to glance over.

Smiling wide, Hawke passed the book to him. The cover was a soft blue while the golden text proclaimed the title to be "Wanderer's Trails."

"This one's shorter, with less thees and thous, and a lot more punching. We can probably get it all in a few go's. Though, if you want to go back to stuffy Shartan and his army of dullness..." she made her position crystal clear. Fenris hoped to finish the book on the elven general, but he couldn't deny Hawke this request.

Tipping his head to her, Hawke smiled wide and spun towards the couch beside the fire. "There's some wine by the table," Fenris began, his fingers slipping the cover open to find the first page.

"When isn't there?" Hawke chuckled, already filling the mugs. While she gathered up the refreshments, Fenris sat rigid upon the edge of the couch and began to read aloud.

The afternoon passed quickly, Fenris flipping through pages. He'd relaxed enough thanks to a simpler text and more invigorating story. With one leg crossed over his lap, he leaned deep into the couch while Hawke, sitting in the chair beside the couch, had her legs up on the low table.

"'Deafening growls shattered the air. Liam shook each one off, his dead leg dragging a rut in the mud. Behind, a head poked through the thick fog. Its mane rattled in the winds, the pupils of the yellow eyes sharpening to slits when the wings of the creature beat apart the air. Flying off the ground, it landed a single paw upon the man's chest. Spraying hot saliva in a bone crushing roar, the...the, Mani-tie-or-e?"

Hawke sat up at his stumble, her eyes opening from what had looked like an afternoon slumber. He tried to sound out the words the way she'd shown him, but it kept slipping through his grasp. Sliding in beside Fenris, Hawke sat upon the couch and inched the book closer to her face. "Ah, manticore. Mythical beast with the head of something and the body of something else. Because that's what thedas needs, more weird shit stalking through fogs and rivers."

He blinked at the word a bit more, repeating it in his head, before turning over to Hawke. Her lips were bright red, stained from the wine, and her eyes shined not as if she'd been roused from a light nap but had been hanging upon his every word. "Manticore," Fenris said aloud, and Hawke clapped him on the back in exuberance. She was always celebrating the smallest achievement as if each was a miracle of the Maker.

"How do you know of such things?"

"Mage father plus mage sister means you hear about a lot of weird shit. Least you do when you're pretending to be doing your chores, but anything's better than washing up socks. Blech. I hate socks. Exact matches of things are weird. No one comes out exactly perfect, we ain't made to be, but socks. Oh they all get their pairs because reasons of never being alone. Very clingy socks are."

To most a woman ranting about socks would probably be a sign that she'd had too much to drink or been exposed to a poisonous gas, but Hawke was often doing that. She'd spout out her opinions on life that when revisited bore a strange resemblance to a philosophy. Varric even hinted that he'd tried to start writing some of Hawke's thoughts down on the assumption of getting a small Self Help book out, but people found her ability to strip away the facade of life unnerving. Fenris was drawn to it like a suffocating man was to a breath of air, even though he shouldn't be.

"Keep on going," Hawke said. Folding her hands behind her head, she stretched back against the couch. As her eyes slipped closed, she said, "You're getting to the best part."

Fenris blinked, "Best part? You've read this before?"

"Course, it's one of my favorites. When the wanderers get to the cave with the bear that's not really a bear but one o' them skin changers. Used to scare me all the time as a kid. Kept looking under the floorboards for secret bears," Hawke's reminiscing paused and she opened an eye at his look, "What?"

"Why have me read something you know?" he stuttered. No wonder she was nearly asleep the entire time, her eyes closed as he droned on the words and sentences she knew well.

"'Cause it's one of my favorites," Hawke chuckled. "I thought you might like it too. If you don't, ya know..." she moved her hand down as if to pull the book away, but Fenris kept a grip to it.

"No, I am, I only was...Never mind." Shaking off the feeling of stepping on the wrong branch over a bear pit, Fenris searched for his lost place.

"Also, with that voice," she whistled softly under her breath, "there ain't a book in my library I wouldn't want to listen to you read. Shit, I bet you could make Anders' manifesto sound sexy."

Fire burned in his veins, red hot coals squatting in his stomach that had to be from her mentioning the abomination. He was often pressing upon Hawke's time, inviting her to assist in small matters he could easily handle himself. Drawing closer than need be, touching her shoulders and hands as if it was a simple matter not laid with a dozen wire traps. Fenris wanted to ruminate upon the anger of thinking upon Anders because he had no concept of how to approach the rest of her sentence.

Blinking through the haze, he began to read, but the story slipped away from his attention. Liam and the Manticore faded in favor of his mind's eye drawing over to the woman perched beside him. One hand remained behind her head, cushioning the black hair, while another sat upon the knee so close if he shifted an inch her knuckles would touch him. As his mouth moved the words, his eyes kept darting down to the hand, wishing that it would break from her skin in order to glance across his. Cup his knee, in a friendly manner.

Friends would do that, familiar pats of encouragement or the like. Hawke was exuberant often with the others, hugging nearly everyone upon greeting except for him. There was no reason to inquire why, Fenris knew it was because she felt embarrassed or didn't wish to draw close to him. He couldn't blame her, Hawke could have the world at her fingertips if she wanted it. Why turn even a moment upon the elven man with no name, no past, and potentially no future?

_Sexy._

She called him, no, his voice, that word. Concept. It was meaningless, as shallow as Isabela's attempts to disarm him. Hawke was playing, as she did with others, or being polite to him. That had to be it. A way to apologize for interrupting his day of sitting and staring at the fire by offering up a compliment.

Gorgeous.

He'd thought it on occasion, the hungry parts of his body that cared nothing for food noticing a pretty face or toned form. But Hawke was the first to draw it from a fleeting glimmer before he moved on and transform it into something else. Fenris began to dream of her; those fingers rolling across his skin, her hair falling beside his face, her naked body tumbling with his. It was unnerving to stand near the real woman while the memories of his dream clung like leeches.

To touch her cheek once, to taste her smiling lips...

The words of the story clogged in his throat, Fenris' hands trembling at the notion of kissing the woman beside him. Hawke, oblivious to his lecherous thoughts, sat up and tried to peer down at the last sentence.

"'Micha, a woman of great esteem, approached the campsite with a pack of goods. Her golden hair glimmered--,'" Hawke paused, those stormy eyes staring deep into Fenris' as she waited for him to pick up the tale.

A handful of dark spots, perhaps freckles or moles, darted across her nose as if Hawke blew poorly ground pepper against her face. He couldn't stop staring at them, wishing to caress his fingers down the freckles on her bridge until they scattered from her rising cheek. Lips of cherry wood glistened as her tongue glided over them in a thought.

Darting forward, the ache in Fenris' body took command, and he kissed Hawke's beautiful smile. She tasted of the sea, crisp winds wafting down the clear mountain until they blended with salt rising with the tide. Hawke sat still below him, Fenris realizing he had no concept of what came next. Was it...wrong? Bad? Had he ruined everything between them in one foolish grab?

His body slid away slowly in failure, pulling his mouth from hers, when Hawke's hands curled around the back of his armor and pressed him tighter. As if roused from a hundred year slumber, her lips cupped around his, softly nibbling and sucking with a shared hunger. Rising to meet it, Fenris pressed his palm to her cheek for balance. A gentle moan rolled through her throat at the contact, and he tugged it away for fear of hurting her.

Hawke's eyes opened at the loss of his fingers and slowly she shifted back, not away but far enough to talk without accidentally biting him. "So that happened," her eyebrows scrunched together in uncertainty. He melted deeper into himself, wishing to vanish, but Hawke chuckled, "If I knew it took an old action story to get that reaction, I'd have brought it over first."

"I should not have, you have given no reason for me to. I am sorry," Fenris shuddered. He wanted to slink away, perhaps crawl into the wine cellar and not return for a few weeks or months. When he attempted to slide further away from the couch and his abject humiliation, he was startled to find Hawke's hand pressed against the back of his armor.

"Sorry for what?" she smiled. "Okay, the first kiss was a bit like biting without teeth but you more than made up for it with the next one."

"You were..." She had moaned, no doubt in pain or regret, and he pressed her. He never wanted to press her. "I should not have done that."

Hawke's hands slid down to land upon her lap. She stared at her strong fingers as if they were ten little caterpillars attached to her hand. "It's funny, people always say 'Oh, that Hawke. Ain't much going on in her head, but at least you know where she stands. Easy to read. Like one of them picture books for kids.' I..." Her eyes stared into his and so close he spotted a dab of brown streaked through her silver grey. "I like you Fenris. Maybe I'm no good at showing it. No, I know I'm not. Bury any proper interest away deep because, well... Most men get rather grumpy being seen with someone who's taller and can take a punch better. I'm used to that, don't see any point in risking myself if it'll just get slapped away and all, but..."

Barely a breath from his body, Hawke drew her fingers through the air directly over his thigh, then skirted it up his chest until they flexed right beside his cheek. "I know you don't like being touched, so I try to not do it even if I really, really want to. Doesn't seem right to, so I sit on my hands a lot and hope you don't notice."

She didn't hug him because she didn't want to hurt him?

The irony drew a snicker to Fenris' lips. Unaware of the joke, Hawke's trembling smile faded. _Fenheedis!_ She must have read it as his laughing at her. Grabbing onto her hand before it faded back to her lap, Fenris guided her fingers softly towards his cheek. They barely skirted over his skin, but the reaction was instantaneous, his eyes rolling shut as energy sparked over every inch of his body. Such a tiny thing, and it nearly sent him reeling. Opening his eyes, Fenris stared into hers. Slowly he guided her fingers up and together they combed through his hair.

"Here," he said, releasing her hand, "you can touch here and it won't hurt. The rest I need a warning, control."

Smiling, Hawke parted through the fringe dangling before his eyes. The tug of her fingers felt like wind trembling through his hair, like the breeze of Seheron blowing across the sea while he sat beside the Fog Warriors. Shaking off the pit in his gut, Fenris buried the growl he felt in his heart. Her gentle swish of his hair was soothing, but deep within himself he felt the rise of the slumbering hunger.

She seemed entranced, batting at his hair like a cat would, while he memorized her sharp face. In all the time they'd known each other, the most Fenris would risk were furtive glances from the edge of his eyes. A quick check to make certain it was Hawke and no one else. Any more would be... He didn't know, but it felt wrong. And now he let himself stare into her defiant eyes, noticing even more specks of brown sparkling within the field of grey. Always smiling lips that maintained a pillowy cushion despite the stretch. He didn't realize he'd rushed forward, his lips crushing to hers, until Hawke's genuine and impudent eyes slipped closed.

Her one hand remained in his hair, gently tugging the silver strands higher, while the other sat limply at her side. Taking control, Fenris circled a hand over her chin, his fingers walking the path of her unbendable jawline until they cupped the back of her head. Hawke was guiding him with only her lips, softening his voracious attack by lapping her tongue across his mouth. Uncertain what she wanted, he paused in the heavy kissing and parted his pursed lips.

Darting in like a cloaked assassin, Hawke's tongue slipped fully into his mouth. A moan rolled in her throat, but not one of agony -- he could tell that now as he tasted so much more of this impossible woman. Wily and as powerful as its owner, her tongue tussled with his as Fenris roused from following to forging his own path. Twisting his head, he rose up on his thighs to sit higher than Hawke. Both hands cupping her firm face, he delved deep into her warm mouth. Sweet as summer's rain, the wet heat inviting him in, his hunger wondered if her other lips were as welcoming.

As if reading his thought, Hawke's hands climbed across the armor on his chest. The pressure increased against the tattoos, burning like a light abrasion. He wanted to remove the armor, to free himself from the rising pain, but... Fenris shuddered, the enormity of that cliff threatening to engulf him.

With the kiss broken, her beautiful eyes opened and Hawke smiled. "We could always move to the bed that's conveniently over there," she pointed towards the one he never bothered to make sitting in the corner.

Fenris whipped away, a concoction of shame and revulsion burning tracks through his skin. Without an elf shoving her down onto the cushions, Hawke sat up. She batted her hands together and stared over at him. Furiously, Fenris cursed at himself to cease being so mercurial, to pluck himself out of his mind and live for a moment. It wasn't as if she was asking him to serve her, only to put his trust and his body in her hands.

 _Fasta Vaas!_ Why must he damn himself at every turn?

"Fenris," she whispered, her voice light but he had to have stung her.

"I am uncertain if now is the time to explore each other," he rumbled, mentally wincing with each word. Pathetic. No one would accept his cowardice, because that was what it was -- a spineless worm scampering away from fear of the unknown.

Hawke smiled and her fingers waffled against his hair, "Okay. You think about it, about all the thinking parts of it, for when you're ready, and then get back to me."

His eyes lifted from the ether, lost in her sweet face. "You're certain?"

"Course. I mean, it ain't like we're all gonna die tomorrow in some horrible invasion. Time's not a big deal to spend. And that stuff, is, well it's kinda a big deal, to some, I guess. I doubt Isabela'd stop to blink beyond trying to figure out which of her buckles got stuck."

A single laugh reverberated in his throat before sinking low into his chest. It was a simple matter, it should be to let loose for a time, to be with a beautiful woman, fully with her as one can be. "I will consider it," he said.

"Good," Hawke smiled. "And now I best be getting back home before mother sends Bodahn to hunt me down. Last time he managed to get himself turned around in Darktown, then I had to rescue him from blood pirates...whole mess."

"Blood pirates? Malifecarum pirates?"

"No, just pirates who drank blood for some Maker tainted reason. I swear something in Kirkwall makes everyone lose their damn minds. Maybe it's the water," Hawke tipped an empty glass near her and pretended to sniff it before smiling wide. She was disarming the awkwardness the amazing way Hawke could. Stretching, she rose to her feet.

"Here," Fenris slipped an old piece of parchment into the book, then handed it to Hawke. Her eyes folded a moment in concern before he added, "In case you wish to read ahead before you return with it next week."

Her smile warmed his heart, "Got ya. So," Hawke patted the book, "I'll be seeing you whenever. Later. Um, goodbye, Fenris." She wafted closer to the staircase, too far away for him to easily slide up near her.

Nodding his head to her, Hawke took the walk down the stairs alone. It wasn't until she was at the door that it struck him she was hoping for a goodbye kiss or something from him to reveal his intentions, and all he could do was dumbly nod. What were his intentions? To bed Hawke? The idea was impossible, as impossible as a slave escaping from his Tevinter master. As unimaginable as the same slave tumbling into the circle of a Ferelden refugee who rose to the heights of society without losing a scrap of what made her amazing.

And what would come of it? He scowled at himself, trying to dampen the thrush to his cheeks and in his heart. If he was with her, fully with her, what would occur next? Would he find himself as beholden to her as he was to Danarius? Trapped not by chains on his wrists or in his mind, but by his heart?

As the door closed with a great thump, rattling more dust off the shelves, Fenris told himself that he wouldn't think of Hawke that way.

He broke his promise that very night.

 

* * *

 

The words "Micha, a woman of great esteem, approached the campsite with a pack of goods. Her golden hair glimmered--," screamed up at him from the book courtesy of the same scrap of parchment he placed in it as a mark. They never made it past that sentence, because he did think about it. He couldn't stop himself from thinking about her kiss pressed not just to his lips but imagining her lips touching his entire body. Couldn't stop considering what it'd be to have her smell envelope his own. To wake with her warm body curled to his, not for warmth but because she didn't wish to let go.

Screwing up the tears in his eyes, no doubt courtesy of the painful saw blade that bit apart his abdomen, Fenris returned the book to its shelf. He didn't want Hawke to catch him reading it, to wonder if she even remembered the significance it held for him.

Fenris crawled into the bed and drew the coverlets over his head to try and blanket out the light. He never should have kissed her or taught her how to touch him without pain.

Rolling over, he glared at the light rising off his body from the lyrium singing with his grief.

He never should have gone to her. That one moment of weakness ruined everything they ever had.


	3. Consequences

Pounding rattled awake his thoughts. They couldn't be dreams because Fenris wouldn't let himself slip into the fade while in Hawke's bed. At first he thought little of it, but as the assault continued a familiar fear percolated through him. He'd been discovered.

It trailed his every waking move since he returned to Tevinter. No, since he left and broke free from Danarius' clutches. He always lived his life two or three steps ahead, dousing embers, leaving behind false footprints, using go betweens for meetings, but even then there were more than a few close calls. Fenris knew he was relying upon the luck of the Maker and in many ways it surprised him how long that seemed to stretch. Few could have guessed a runaway slave would ever survive this long.

Rolling out of the bed, pain shredded up his side when his feet touched the floor, but he shook it off. If they came for him, he'd be prepared. His fingers scrabbled for a sword on his back, but -- of course -- Hawke removed it. A flicker of shadows from between a set of bookcases drew his attention.

The bedroom was situated right above the entrance to the house. While it appeared that a wall blocked it off, in truth there was a gap -- a sort of pass through window -- to allow anyone an unobstructed but hidden view of whoever was about to come through the door. Clever, Hawke.

That was who owned the shadow, the woman knotting one hand tighter to her robe and the other around a hilt. She didn't stare up at Fenris, perhaps she forgot he was even here, and yanked open the door.

"It's about time you let me in. Did you not notice the ice storm beating down across all of Kirkwall?"

Shaking his crown-less head, Varric Tethras stomped into Hawke's home as if he owned the place. Given his new position and close friendship with her, perhaps he did. Hawke cracked a smile, the dagger returning to a pile on a table behind the door. "What in the seven shits of a bronto are you doing here?"

"Can't you remember, Hawke? Wednesday is Wicked Grace night. Do I have to get a chanter in here to sing the calendar at you? Because I'm pretty sure I could. The chantry's been sniffing around the office lately asking for more coin because they need another golden statue of Grand Cleric Elthina to go in front of their shiny new building."

Fenris watched from his hidden position while the dwarf unlaced his coat and placed it upon a hook as if he'd done it a hundred times before. The familiar line of chest hair glinted by the candle light, Varric unwilling to abandon his style of attire no matter how great a social height he achieved. He didn't seem to be aware of elven eyes watching his every move while he fished a deck of cards out of a pocket.

"I didn't think you'd show tonight," Hawke said, "cause, in case you didn't notice, there's kinda an ice storm going on. Wait, did you make Bran draw up your entire retinue just to head out in this?" She pressed her face to a window pane, trying to pierce through the thick darkness of the storm.

"Nah," Varric waved his hand then shrugged, "he managed to hide in a closet to avoid having to do it. Man's too damn smart for his job. So, anything new in the abode of the Champion?"

Fenris tensed up. Even though there was little reason for the dwarf to care or do anything against him, he was not in the mood to speak with him. They were not at odds, but Varric had a way of keeping tabs on people even if they didn't wish to be. More than a few times Fenris would discover stashed inside a supply run pilfered off a slaver a letter addressed solely to him, as if the dwarf knew Fenris would hit it.

Hawke shook her head and slapped her hands together. "Nope, been pretty quiet out here. You know, because anyone normal would stay inside what with the ice storm," she raised her voice at the end as if calling his sanity into question.

"Hawke, what about me says normal?" Varric drew a hand down his chest and wagged an eyebrow.

She chuckled at that and sighed, "Good point. Come on. I didn't put out snacks but I'm certain there's something in the larder we can ransack, and there's always a continual supply of Weisshaupt wine. I think it was the Wardens way of saying 'please, get out of our country.'" Their friendship was a mystery to Fenris, not in that it worked but how it never ventured beyond that. Hawke was loyal to Varric, and he in turn almost blindly to her, yet they never seemed to care for each other romantically.

He tried to inquire about it once, after the return from the Deep Roads when Hawke continued to befriend the dwarf for no given reason. In particular after his brother turned on them all. And, perhaps because Fenris was trying to determine if there was any other competition. Sadly, he missed the most obvious answer in front of his face before it was too late. At his question Hawke pulled a face, almost spat out her beer, and said Varric was like her brother but less annoying. Fenris suspected Varric thought the same for her.

While Hawke shuffled off to the kitchen that Fenris couldn't see, Varric paused. He seemed to be staring around at the paintings gracing the walls, which he'd no doubt seen hundreds of times before. Perhaps he was even the one to talk Hawke into buying them. After scrutinizing a pastoral of two dragons cuddled by sheep, the dwarf's eyes suddenly snapped right to where Fenris was hiding. He wanted to duck and weave to avoid his eyes, but the elf was frozen at the slow, knowing nod of the Viscount.

"Are you gonna get your ass in here and give me all your coin or what?" Hawke shouted from the kitchen.

Varric's smile slapped on and he turned to focus on Hawke, "Me? Last I checked you were a good ten sovereigns in the hole to me. Also two rubies the size of my fist, a goat, and some woman named Candy."

"Are you sure it wasn't two women named Ruby and candy the size of my fist?"

Varric's response faded as he slipped into the kitchen to join Hawke, no doubt to spend the night passing cards. Would he say anything to her about the elf squatting in her bedroom? Did he think Fenris snuck in under Hawke's nose? Or was that his way of telling the elf "I know you're here, so don't do anything stupid." As if Fenris would ever hurt her.

He stumbled in trying to return to the bed, his fingers skirting along the duvet. He did hurt her beyond measure in this same bed. It wasn't supposed to happen, none of it. But Fenris' skin couldn't stop itching as he thought over Hadriana's parting words before he crushed her heart. That should have soothed him, to finally finish the right hand off before he could get to Danarius.

Why, instead of a sense of victory, or of picturing the witch's face the moment realization she was about to die dawned across it, did he keep thinking of Hawke? Standing there pleading for him to listen, to not overreact and run. To let her help him. He only went to her home that night to assure her he did not flee Kirkwall, to thank her for helping him. For wanting to keep him.

When her fingers drew across his arm to beg him to remain, the energy zapped through his body and straight into his brain. It shattered all control he had, his body wanting to fight while his heart...

He should not have been there.

He should have stepped back when her hands followed the swirls of his unmarked skin, always watching to see if it stung him.

He should have stopped her as she tugged off her clothes and guided his fingers to touch all of her.

He should not have given in to every lustful desire that'd trailed his dreams since meeting her. Should not have tasted her, touched her, and plunged himself far more intimately inside her than he ever could in battle.

He should not have left her.

Three months or more, Fenris wandered up and down the slave pens in the Free Marches alone. He convinced himself it was to search for more Magisters come for him or other elves. Every night he lied to himself while his head rested upon rocks. His heart was beyond reproach, there was no quarter in his life to be given, no future shared with anyone. The best course of action was to leave and forget anything ever occurred between him and her. But his dreams wouldn't obscure the truth; Hawke was always there waiting for him. He nearly made it to Nevarra before he realized that he couldn't do this without her.

Terrified of being penned in by his heart, but perhaps even more so of facing the road alone, Fenris returned to Kirkwall. And, it was the dwarf of all people who he ran into first.

* * *

 

 

Bruised and battered, crusty blood clinging to old wounds he barely noticed, Fenris wandered into the Hanged Man as if he never left. The tavern, in response, appeared the same. Corff glanced over at the elf, no doubt trying to determine if he had any coin. Thanks to stumbling across a bevy of bandits in the hills, he was in fact carrying more than usual. Fenris' troubled eyes glanced over at the bar, trying to discern if the future hangover was worth the scouring of his emotions in the present.

"Edwina," a familiar voice called out over the whispers of patrons, "how do you spell ouroboros?"

"I don't," the woman shouted back to the dwarf holed up in the biggest suite in the place.

Hitching his slack belt tighter, Fenris stepped up the stairs to spot the strawberry blonde hair as Varric sat hunched over a parchment with quill in hand. "If you're not going to help me out then could you at least get me...?" He sat up from his work and the smile flipped. Not to a frown, but a different sort of smile, the kind Fenris came to expect whenever the dwarf stared at him.

"Well, this is quite the surprise, Elf. Most here weren't thinking you'd come back at all."

Fenris snorted once, unimpressed by the man's incessant need to dive into everyone's business but his own.

Undeterred, Varric extended a hand to an open chair and lowered his boots off the table. "As chatty as ever," the dwarf chuckled, "I see your time abroad really changed your whole perspective on life. Did you see the sights? Get all the way to Val Royeaux? Battle dragons? Meet the empress? Battle dragons in the Empress' gowns?"

"Nothing so spectacular," Fenris grumbled while falling into the chair and freeing his legs. He forgot how nice it was to sit without worrying about water seeping into his clothes.

"Consider me surprised at your return, and that's saying something. There aren't many in thedas that can do it. I thought for sure once you sprung the coop you weren't turning back. So did a lot more if my little pool had any say in it. Though a few had faith you'd wander back in through that door, perhaps with a few new scars and reeking of fish."

Fenris blinked at the news, a rare ray of sunlight peeking through the fog around his heart. He came to Varric first because no one knew Kirkwall like the dwarf; no one could tell him of what he missed. Attacks, dangerous adventures, looming threats, Hawke...

"Who thought I'd return?"

Varric's smile tilted at his eagerness, before returning full bore as he jabbed the quill outward, "The Hanged Man's own resident pirate for one."

Leaning against the doorframe, Isabela stuck out her chest while patting a finger against her lips. "I knew he couldn't stay away long. There's far too much in Kirkwall to catch the eye and taut, lithe body of someone like our broody Fenris."

He scowled, trying to hide behind the fringe of his hair, but that never worked against Isabela. Any angry face drew her closer, her fingers skirting near as if she would willingly let a wolf bite her hand off just to see what it felt like. It was Varric whose normally bright eyes burned through him.

"Funny that," he said, closing his book and taking a drink. "You been by to see Hawke yet?"

Fenris didn't flinch at the name. He thought it'd take him a few game of cards before he'd get any information on her from Varric. But to have him come right out and say it... Had something happened? Was she injured? Bottling down the panic along with the fog, Fenris shook his head, "No. Stepped off the boat and came here first."

"Oh, you were traveling by ship?" Isabela oozed into the chair across from him. She sat crosswise so her legs extended over the arms, which caused the shortness of her outfit to ride up even higher than usual. Fenris glared past her head, as if he was able to see through the walls themselves, not falling for her trap. "How big?" she breathed. "People say it's all in how you handle it, but they're full of shit. If you don't have the proper size to tame the waves, there's no point in even getting wet."

He couldn't miss the way she drew her tongue across her lips, Isabela's barely concealed innuendo -- if it could even be called that -- falling in a crash upon the table. Fenris regretted not ordering a drink, if only to have something to burn through the awkward pinch in his chest. While he wished she'd leave him be, he couldn't deny enjoying the attention on occasion. But not now.

"Rivani," Varric interrupted.

"Hm?" She dropped her purr to focus on the dwarf.

"Why don't you go ransack and pillage one of the barmaids? I think there's a new mercenary group in town. The Scarlet Pumpernickel or something as equally disturbing."

Isabela groaned, "None of 'em look like more than a five copper roll."

"He hasn't seen Hawke, yet. After being gone for three months," Varric all but hissed at her.

The pirate so unconcerned with proper mores she couldn't be persuaded to wear pants in the middle of a chantry service suddenly sobered up. Sliding off the chair to her feet, she nodded her head, "Right. I'll see about getting some drinks." Leaning over the table, Isabela's hand clasped upon the gauntlet of Fenris' right arm. Her pressed cleavage darted close to his nose as she whispered, "You'll know where to find me when you need a shoulder to cry on."

Having said her peace, the pirate sauntered out, her hips swaying like the waves. Fenris paid it no mind, her words stinging like ice against his skin. "Is something wrong with Hawke? Was she injured?" He'd feared it with every step away from her. Hawke was known for being reckless, often charging headlong into battle with no plan but somehow always coming out unscathed. While she'd made it to nearly 26 without him, Fenris thought often of all the close saves he'd performed for her. Without him by her side, what if she failed?

Varric shook his head, "No, she's good. Better than she has been in...a few months."

The last words were meant to stab barbs into Fenris' skin, but the dwarf was too late. He'd already lashed himself every day for his cowardice. His only hope was that Hawke hadn't been as invested as he was and she'd find her feet once again.

"She is not injured?" Fenris asked, drumming his fingers against the table.

"Not too many new scars that I know of, though she spent some time up Sundermount with Daisy. I think they were camping but all I heard was 'wyverns, big ones, with beans on their feet.' Who knows with Hawke."

A small smile lifted at the image of her attempting to hug a wyvern around the neck, the confused creature no doubt glancing around in concern before giving in. Everyone gave in to Hawke's charms. It was impossible not to.

Scrunching up his eyes, he glanced down the stairs towards the bar where Isabela stood with both elbows upon it waiting. If Hawke was not injured then why did she expect him to come crying to her? "What have I missed?" Fenris asked. He didn't turn to the dwarf until he sensed him reaching for his crossbow.

Fenris cooly eyed him up, but Varric didn't cease placing Bianca tight into his arms. "Call it insurance. Why did it have to be me cursed to tell you? You're not going to reach into my heart and pluck out my organs, right?"

"I had not considered it prior, but I'm growing more concerned it may be necessary," Fenris deadpanned.

"Now I know I'm dead, the Elf just told a joke," Varric sighed before finishing off his pint. Wiping it away, he said, "Okay, here's the deal..."

His words faded away as his eyes trailed behind Fenris towards the door. "Ah shit," rolled off his tongue when Fenris turned to follow.

Hawke stood in the entryway, her hair a bit shorter and her armor now a verdant green, but she looked the same as he left her. No, better than how he'd left her. A bright smile crossed her cheeks, which helped to replace the frown that he'd fled into the night from. The frown that trailed him every step out of Kirkwall. She lifted a hand to wave at Isabela, no doubt something smart dripping from her mouth, when the door opened again.

Strutting in like a peacock inside an Orlesian garden, the abomination stopped beside Hawke's side. He stood so close, Fenris felt his skin begin to itch. There was no reason for the man to be near enough he had to wrap a hand around Hawke's waist.

After saying something witty with Isabela, Hawke turned to acknowledge the leech adhered to her side. Fenris' vision blanked out as Hawke dipped down and placed her lips against the filthy, blood soaked mage's mouth. It couldn't have been little more than a peck, but time stilled to an eternity as he watched _him_ kissing and tasting her.

No!

"Don't do anything stupid," Varric's words bit through the red haze across his eyes. Fenris whipped his head over, wanting to snap apart anything in sight. He moved to bash his hand into the table to feel something, but his entire limb passed through the wood. Glancing down, Fenris spotted the glow of lyrium casting out from under his armor. He had to leave. If he remained here, unable to control his powers, while near _him_ , he could do untold damage without meaning to.

Stumbling to his legs, Fenris backed away from the table so fast Varric's mug spilled over. He didn't bother apologizing. With his eyes glaring at the floor, Fenris barreled down the stairs towards the door. He didn't look over at Isabela, at the bartender, his sight only on the freedom his blood ached for.

"Fenris?"

Maker. Her voice called to him and, before he could stop himself, he glanced over at Hawke. Startled at his sudden appearance, her smile faded to shock. She blinked rapidly and shook her head. Stepping forward, Hawke looked about to say something to him, but he couldn't take it. Not now. Not with the abomination watching.

Yanking open the door, Fenris spat out, "Excuse me," before he fled into the cool of the night.

Amazingly, none of the roaming gangs that plagued Kirkwall's streets attempted to squat inside his mansion while he was away. His mansion. Ha. He had as much claim to the place as the man who burned out his mind and soul. But in all of thedas, there was nowhere else for Fenris to go. He'd tried to run, as if blistering feet and weary muscles would wipe away that sudden burn of memories scorching into his brain.

He could have explained it to Hawke. No doubt she'd have listened quietly perched upon his couch, nodding her head as he sputtered around a word or two while the wounds of his past bled all over the carpet. Maybe she would have turned from him, realized he was what Fenris always knew himself to be: a lost cause. That fear of her seeing the truth wasn't why he ran.

While in her warm embrace, oddly soothed while also restless, the thought drifted out of Fenris' heart that he never wanted to leave her. It was fleeting, broken apart by a lust to taste her and shattered memories of the man before the shackles. But it terrified him. He would often quiz Hawke about home, wondering if she ever intended to return to that which she left. Of course she'd bat it away with a wave of her fingers, chuckling that Ferelden seemed to be getting on fine thanks to her cousin. Did she know he wasn't asking for her sake but his?

A home.

A friend.

A...

Roaring, Fenris smashed his foot against a crate of bottles. Wine that had yet to fill his veins dribbled from below the sole of his boot like the blood off a magister's broken chest. He knew when he fled that Hawke would...she'd have to look elsewhere. It was what people did. They found comfort where they could, when they could. Flesh was peddled in all forms to those who had the coin. There didn't even have to be...emotions involved.

But why did it have to be with _him?_

An abomination, proud of the demon in his head, he'd lecture any and all of their failings because he was unable to turn the mirror back upon himself. Anders acted both as if nothing were his fault and he was the savior of all in the same breath. It made Fenris want to rip out his demon heart and stuff it down his throat. But he stayed his hand, because...because of her.

Bleary eyes stared down at the glass shards sparkling against the flickering candles. How could she do this to him? Hawke knew his thoughts on the abomination, and to turn around barely three months later to find happiness with _him_? His fist pounded into the wall, dust raining across his hair. Blinking through the rising haze, Fenris punched again with his left. The pain was right. The pain was all he knew, all he'd ever known.

It was what he deserved.

No. It was what _he_ deserved.

"Are you planning on beating down all the walls with your bare knuckles or is this some spur of the moment redecorating?"

Fenris dropped his fists and glared through the red haze around his eyes to spy the pirate leaning against the wall. How did he not hear her enter or even climb the stairs? She drew a finger down the exposed skin of her chest and then inspected it for dirt.

Groaning, but not answering, Fenris turned from the wall and the shattered crate. His eyes honed in on the flickering of the fire, little more than a puff of smoke in the hearth was all he could manage. "What are you doing here?"

"Well," he heard her oozing out of her lean, her boots clipping across the floor. "After that little surprise you had in the tavern, I thought..." her breath buffeted against the back of his neck, and slowly her fingers climbed along his arm, "you might wish for some company."

He growled, the feral one of a wolf preparing to rip out a trespasser's throat, but Isabela wasn't deterred. It took a lot to shake her from her prize. Her fingers drew upwards, pinning his armor tighter to his flesh. The alcohol deadened everything, the pain of it barely pinging against his brain, or perhaps it was the turmoil rotting away in his mind and soul that killed it all.

At his shoulder, Isabela dipped her fingers down his chest, tugging him back to her. A breath whispered against his ear, "Tell me to go, and I'll do it."

He ignored her attentions because they were nothing more than that, little distractions he couldn't be bothered with while on his mission. But what mission? If he was going to kill Danarius what was he doing here squatting in Kirkwall instead of attacking him head on back in Tevinter? Fenris was lying to himself. He was pathetic, a worthless pile of skin and bone that convinced itself it was capable of vengeance but scampered away to a dark hole at the first chance of a breath.

No, he shook off Isabela's pointed questions and plunging fingers because he didn't want to hurt Hawke. To have her stand back and let Isabela take her quick pound of flesh, no doubt souring Fenris forever to the mighty woman who trailed his wants and desires. But it didn't matter. She had the abomination now to keep her bed warm. That was who in all of thedas she chose for her side. A hypocritical mage liable to draw ruin and death to her all because...

Snapping up, Fenris spun in place. The raw anger sloshing under his skin awoke the tattoos as he glared at the pirate woman staring at him. He was another warm body to her, many in a sea. He'd tried being something more, but that got him nothing except fresh pain and regret. Grabbing onto Isabela's waist, Fenris pinned her in place. Her eyes opened a moment in shock, fingers reaching back for the dagger, when he dragged her across the floor to plant his lips against hers.

With his skin roiling and brain pounding, he kissed her as if that would free him from the trap of his own making. Isabela took charge, shedding clothing while they stumbled back to his bed. Sharing flesh for only the second time he could remember, Fenris did as told -- he was her slave, the only thing he'd ever been good at in life. Pain tried to ravage his body, but he shook it off with every dip into the pleasures available to him. How long he'd denied himself something so simple for no good reason. Why? Because he thought he could be worthy of some filthy refugee's attention? Love?

When Isabela rolled off of him, he didn't expect her to stay, but Fenris was surprised by how quickly she picked up her things and got dressed. He sat up like a drunkard uncertain where he'd wound up after a bender. Vision swimming not from wine but a poison in his soul he couldn't escape, Fenris glared at the tattoos lighting up along his arms.

What man would he be without them? Would he be on this eternal march of destruction or could he have been someone who found peace? It didn't matter, this was the path the Maker set him on, this was the what he did with the choices given to him.

"I best be getting back before that little shit Toff swipes my seat," Isabela spoke, her voice airy as normal, as if they hadn't ridden each other barely a moment earlier. His stomach was yet sticky with the resulting cum, while it was little more than a blink in time for her. Growling without answering, Fenris couldn't bring himself to lift his eyes.

She shrugged, unhurt by his indifference. After sliding on her boot and checking the strap around her thigh she stepped towards the stairs. Fleeing in the night, just as he had done to Hawke, Isabela tied back her hair and shrugged. "I won't tell anyone your underthings are pink," she whispered as if that was his greatest concern in life. Having said her peace, she vanished into the darkness alone.

Maybe he should care how little it meant to her, how easily she returned to her old life unchanged and untouched by a brief moment of sex. But, even as Fenris clung to her in some paltry form of revenge, he felt the same. She didn't wipe away the regret clinging to his soul for his leaving Hawke, nor did his bedding Isabela quench the anger burning deep in his gut against the mage.

Glaring around the room, Fenris spotted a bottle that survived the massacre. He didn't realize he'd wandered over to uncork it and drown his throat once more in its song until he felt a pinch into his bare feet. Blood dribbled from glass he foolishly trod upon in his quest to find succor. As it melded with the spilled wine, Fenris failed to feel anything. All he had was the pain and the bottle.

For days, perhaps weeks, that was his life -- blood drenched hands courtesy of slit bandit throats, and crimson wine gushing down his throat to blot out the thoughts. Fenris lost track of time, often waking at night hungry and stumbling through all of Kirkwall to find something to sustain him. If no food could be found, dead bodies and alcohol would suffice.

That was how he wound up in Darktown, hunger allowing him exit from the house, and the drink steering him right to the last place in thedas he wished to be. The abomination stood at the back of his pathetic appeal to decency, swaying a broom back and forth. For once, no one was in his clinic. Perhaps even the destitute and hopeless realized risking their lives to an abomination's whims wasn't wise.

He looked deliriously happy. But why shouldn't he be? All he had to do was wait, wait for Fenris to misjudge, to let his guard down, and then swoop in on her. So quick. Her bed was barely even cold before she was in _his_ clutches.

Did she even care about Fenris or was Hawke playing with him the same way Isabela did?

What if she didn't have any say in it? Fenris narrowed his bloodshot eyes at the mage. That's what he was, a mage. And eventually all mages, when backed into a corner, turn to blood. What if it wasn't charm that got him into her bed, but something darker?

"What do you think you're doing?" Fenris shouted, the words strangling against his blotted tongue.

Anders turned away from his sweeping, his eyebrows meeting in confusion before he sighed, "Cleaning. I can understand why it's a foreign concept to you considering the state of your squalor. But I try to keep this place somewhat tidy, at least remove the blood and vomit before the rats converge on it."

He was laughing at him, enjoying Fenris' failure because the abomination pulled one over on him. No. He wouldn't fall for it.

Shoving aside cots, Fenris stomped closer to the mage who gripped the broom like a staff. "I know what you've done to her," Fenris hissed, his head butting right next to the abomination.

"Maker's breath," Anders clapped a hand over his nose, "did you drink an entire brewery on the way over here? I think your breath could kill a griffin."

Childish. Foolish. The man wasn't a man at all. He hid behind his veils of resistance as much as jocularity, refusing to face the truth of what he was. Of what he doomed her to.

"Raise your arms," Fenris snarled. He lifted one fist, then another, his eyes narrowing to slits at the mage.

Slowly Anders folded his arms across his chest. Sighing, he tipped his head back to the ceiling as he groaned, "Go home, Fenris. You're drunk off your ass. Which, I am almost jealous of to tell you the truth."

"Coward!" Fenris shouted, earning another sigh and shake of that filthy blonde hair. "Scampering in this shit hole, pretending to play revolutionary as if you've done a thing for those you claim to represent. Running from the circle, the wardens, anything that would place a modicum of duty upon you. You are a coward."

That snapped Anders attention to him, the hands falling out of his relaxed cross. His eyes narrowed as well. "Are you really the one to go throwing that accusation around? Shall we discuss every thing, every _one_ you've run from?"

"You stole her from me!" he shrieked, his blood boiling as the tattoos shot alive.

A glimmer of the demon lurking inside of the mage flashed through the eyes, but it faded. It was replaced by a cold snicker. "Hard to steal something you threw away," Anders hissed. "Acting like you cared. As if you're one to talk. Not even a day back into town and you're already knees up with the pirate."

Fenris reeled back in such shock from the blow he forgot to deny it. "How can you know that?!"

"If you don't want anyone to have a clue, maybe don't go bedding Isabela. She's not the type to shy away from sharing. Maker only knows how many others you've taken in the past months who haven't talked. Really shows how you're so hung up on Hawke," he rolled his eyes, his hands held out palm up as if he planned to fire spells upon the elf.

But it wouldn't work, he didn't have the time at this close of range.

"You come in here, blaming me for your own failures," Anders railed, "when you're too pathetic to see that what you did to Hawke. How badly you hurt her, that's all on you."

Fenris' hand shot out through the air, gripping tight to the abomination's throat. He squeezed once, but kept himself from plunging past the flesh. Anders dug his nails in to try and pull his grip off, but they bounded off the armor. Helpless as a kitten, Fenris could crush his throat or snap his spine before he'd get a single spell off.

"I know what's inside of you, abomination. Your heart is filled with a demon," he gripped tighter, cutting off the air enough to cause Anders to gasp, "Show it to me!"

Blue magic swirled in the eyes, the mage's voice deepening to match the creature he let inside himself. "You will never..." Anders blinked, the brown slotting over as his human pupils returned, "No, no I will not...I control it."

"And if I crushed you right here," Fenris threatened, both fists clasping to his neck.

The mage didn't blink, nor did the demon rise. Anders was all that spoke, "Then you better work fast before I burn a hole through your gut." He'd placed his hands against Fenris' stomach, both of the palms flat as the fade twitched around him. The man was fast; he'd fought darkspawn and other creatures beyond comprehension in his days. Fenris knew his strengths in battle, but at this moment he didn't care if he died as long as he took the abomination down with him.

"Drop your hands and fight me like a man. Prove your worth."

Even with two fists wrapped around his weak neck, Anders chuckled, "I don't have to fight you Fenris." He glared, his eyes piercing through the elf's boozy haze as he sneered, "I already won."

"You're an abomination," Fenris shouted, as if the world would finally wise up, the templars would do their job and purge this monster.

"And you're a rabid dog. You don't fight those, all you do is put them down and move on." He was so Maker damn cocky, his head swiveling around upon that scrawny neck. Snap it! End this!

Hurt her...

She'd despise him for it. Even if he did it for her, to save her from the demon, from what the mage would become. He'd be the one to crush Hawke in the process.

Fenris' hands relaxed and Anders shifted, sensing his weakness. But the elf was quicker than that, gripping tight and glaring down at the hands that were reaching for a weapon. Sighing, the mage returned them back to where they could do the most magical damage.

"There's a demon inside of you."

"Spirit," Anders rolled his eyes, "not that the difference means anything to you."

Panting, Fenris snarled, "If it takes control, if you raise your hand and it, or you, do anything to hurt her..." Leaning so close he could count the veins in the abomination's eyes, Fenris squeezed, "I will kill you."

Shame at what he nearly did broke through his rage, snapping apart his grip as Fenris stumbled back. Anders pawed at his throat, trying to clear it but he kept up a glare on the elf while one hand rotated a rising fireball. He need not bother, Fenris made his peace and he...he had no more left to give.

"You ever set foot in here again, you'll be nothing more than a stain at the door," Anders voice echoed through the fetid clinic trailing Fenris' hasty retreat.

By the time he made it back to his refuge, Fenris was dead certain he'd spoiled everything he thought he came back for. Threatening Anders, nearly trying to... He hated the abomination with every breath in his body, but he wasn't a senseless killer. No, he couldn't be. There was a reason to every life he took, a purpose to it all. His choice. No one else's. Never again.

He'd thought about packing, then wondered if there was really anything left in the mansion that he wanted, when a hand pounded against the door. This had such brute force one of the ugly statues rattled on its hinges. _May it plummet off its perch_ , Fenris snarled. He didn't care who it was. Maybe Aveline came with her guards to finally take back the abandoned manor. Let them have it.

There was no life left in Kirkwall for him.

Had there ever been?

Fenris' hands paused in reaching for a sword, when the pounding began again. Irritated beyond measure, and needing to take it out upon someone, he leapt off the railing to land hard upon the ground floor. Shaking off any pains, he snatched onto the front door's handle and yanked it nearly off its rusty hinges. Every breath in his body fled in an instant.

Standing there was Hawke, a half smile flitting against her face as she focused away from one of the broken torch lights towards the stricken elf. "Hey," she said, lightly waving her fingers.

Anders told her. No doubt he ran straight to Hawke and informed her of how that mad elf nearly snapped his neck. She was here to defend him, to fight for the one she chose. Steadying his breath, Fenris stared up into her eyes and waited for the axe to cleave off his traitorous head.

Hawke shuffled on her feet, "Once I saw you were back in town, I thought, with it being uh Tuesday and all..."

A breath shot in fast through Fenris' mouth and back out in the form of a single laugh. That couldn't be right. Surely she wasn't here for... "Why are you here?" he growled, struggling to not give away the terror crawling up his spine.

Pulling her hands out from behind her back, Hawke showed off a pair of books. "I brought a couple options, cause I didn't know what you'd be in the mood for. Light and airy swashbuckling, or gritty noir mystery. I think there's also a chantry pamphlet jammed in the middle cause I ran into Sebastian and he seems to crap them."

There wasn't a hint of malice in her tone, no lingering pain from how he reacted or treated her. She looked at him as if nothing had happened, not the kiss, nor the night spent together, his long disappearance, or even how he attacked Anders. Nodding his head, Fenris let her inside.

Hawke kept up her chatter, "I see this place didn't change much. Ooh, I think that rat's new though. Or maybe it just got bigger. Did I tell you I saw one as big as a nug? In the Viscount's place, no less. Bran was trying to attack it with a letter opener." She laughed uproariously at the memory.

"What'd you do?" Fenris asked while leading her up the stairs to the same sitting area what felt a lifetime ago.

She shrugged her mountainous shoulders, "It was just a rat. Wasn't harming anybody much. Plucked it up by its tail and took it home. Sandal really likes his new pet. Calls it Todger. None of us were able to stop laughing long enough to correct him."

Falling into the old chair, she extended both books out, "What'll it be; high seas adventures, or murders stalking the streets of Cumberland?"

Fenris froze at the question. She brought him a pirate book to read, and if Anders knew about Isabela then surely she told Hawke. Perhaps it was Varric who was filtering out the news or maybe they were all laughing at Fenris behind his back. For a moment his eyes slid over to the bed that felt more soiled than usual. Shaking it off, he pressed his fingers against the dark grey cover, "The mystery sounds more interesting."

Her smile widened greater at the choice as he slipped onto the couch alone. "Good, it's a good one. Least that's what I was told. I started some in the series, got distracted with my own murderer problems. Someone seems to be back at it in Kirkwall and who do they turn to to solve it?"

"The city guards?" Fenris asked, his emerald eyes poking over the top of the cover before he slicked back the first few filler pages.

Hawke laughed uproariously at that, "That's a good point. All the work I put in, I should really get something for it. If not coin at least a pretty badge that'll get me better seats at the tourney. They say the Beard's gonna go all the way this year, but I don't buy it."

She didn't say anything about what happened between them. Didn't demand an explanation, or threaten him until he gave it. Hawke merely made everything go back to the way it was. Staring down at the words, Fenris was happy to give in.

He'd gotten through the first two murders in the book's plot before Hawke staggered to her legs and tried to stomp a crink out. "Not bad, but it better not be the guardsman the whole time. I swear it's either the captain of the guards, a butler, or someone's dowager mother behind all the murders. Why ain't it the creepy guy what's been stalking through the bushes? Makes the most sense."

Fenris nodded his head, passing over the book to her.

"Nah," Hawke held up her hand, "you can keep it here. You know, for next time. So I don't have to go dragging it around all the time."

"Thank you," Fenris breathed, clutching the book tight to his chest as if he was a young school boy. It was a bit of normalcy to him after he nearly upended everything he'd ever known.

Those storm grey eyes drifted a moment, bearing a wobble like a tear, but Hawke smiled it away, "No problem. Oh, and we were gonna head out to the Wounded Coast tomorrow. Aveline's doing something with Donnic, probably a few somethings, so she's out. Do you want to come along?"

She wanted him to still travel with her. She trusted him enough to watch her back. Nodding, a smile flitted with his innards though it never made it to his lips. "I'd like that."

"Good," she lifted her hand as if about to pat him on the arm, but let it drop back down. Without saying any goodbyes, Hawke headed down the stairs towards the door. Midway across it, she turned back. "Anders will be there too," she said, her stripped voice drawing Fenris to her, "just so you know."

"That..." He abandoned everything in his life, and even when crawling back for forgiveness nearly kicked the few remaining hands away. Fenris had no right to make demands of her, not now, not ever. If he wanted to be in her life, then he'd have to suffer the abomination. "That is not a problem."

Her infectious smiled lifted wide, "Great. See you tomorrow then, Fenris!" She waved her hands emphatically in the air before disappearing out the door.

Clinging to the cracked railing, Fenris stared through the air. "I'll see you too, Hawke."


	4. Why?

In the end, Varric stayed the night, the pair of them doling out cards, then reminiscing by the fire to drinks. While Hawke insisted he remain due to the storm, the same as with Fenris, no doubt the Viscount had much better means and accommodations awaiting him. But none could be persuaded from Hawke's charms, nor was it easy to leave her side. Fenris sat above, able to overhear some of the conversation -- at least all of Hawke's boisterous comments. They talked about politics in Kirkwall, the state of reconstruction and other things that Fenris cared nothing for.

By morning, the dwarf had to leave due to his secretary tracking him down and dragging him back to the keep. It must not have been too hard to guess about Varric's whereabouts, as Hawke gave a polite nod to Bran and then offered him up a "mabari bag" of breakfast to take back with him. Unsurprising Varric would call upon Hawke whenever she was in the city, but it did leave open the question of how often that opportunity was afforded to the Viscount.

With her high profile guest gone, Hawke knocked upon the door to greet Fenris with a hearty, "Good morning!"

He tried to fake he was rising from sleep, tugging the coverlets off his naked chest but she only chuckled at the play.

"Varric's gone, probably won't be back for a few days judging by the vein in Bran's forehead."

"Oh," Fenris blanched, uncertain what to say.

She scooted towards the side of the bed, her bed, and glanced down at the bandage stained with his inner juices. "I didn't say anything to him cause I figured you weren't much in the mood for socializing. Taking a saw blade to the gut and all tends to put a damper on things."

How did she know him so well even after all this time? A grace of a smile flitted with his lips and he tried to nod his thanks.

"How's it feeling?" Hawke asked.

"Stings," was the only answer Fenris could manage. Her hair was yet damp from a very early morning/late night bath while the dwarf snored away upon a couch beside the fire. It dribbled a line of water down her linen shirt, revealing hints of the dark skin below.

Unaware that he couldn't stop staring at her hidden flesh, Hawke sighed, "Best be changing the bandages. Check to make certain I didn't accidentally sew any trinkets or ancient relics in there." She helped to haul him to his feet, a hand slipping around his waist.

"Has that happened before?" Fenris asked.

"Not...exactly," Hawke began to break into a story as she helped him down the stairs and made good on her offer. While cleaning up the wound, she switched to another tale of her time in the Anderfels dealing with Grey Wardens. He'd heard whispers of her visits out there, but never anything concrete. As all things in Hawke's life it seemed to go about as well as she feared.

"...next thing I know, bastard's skin shreds apart and he was a demon the whole time. Course I had to chop his head off. We had so many coulda started our own collection. Skulls ain't good for much though."

Fenris grunted, his hand cupping the fresh bandage against the wound. "Magisters like to use them as drinking vessels."

"Only people trying to show they're super evil and dark do that. It's right stupid. All yer tea's gonna slosh out through the eye sockets. Anyone with any brains can tell ya that," she groaned, having weighed this fact very carefully in her time.

He couldn't stop the chuckle at how seriously she took the matter. Hawke turned from closing up her bag, a question in her face. "Perhaps you should visit Tevinter and inform them of their failure."

A smile rose, and she gestured towards the infamous chair stuffed with griffin down. "Be wanting breakfast? Course you would. No doubt you've been living off of roasted lizard for the past month." Disappearing into the kitchen right near the living room, she left him alone to stare around at the decor.

By the light of dawn, the home looked even more lived in than he'd thought. Magisters had estates fully furnished across the Imperium with slaves sent ahead of their traveling to stoke fires and air out dusty rooms. Their little group took advantage often, squatting where one would have just left or wouldn't be arriving in some time. Once they spent an entire winter in a palace by the sea, the slaves none the wiser as they operated on the lie that they were old friends of the master.

While the homes came equipped with everything one would require to survive, they were never fully lived in. Too clean, too uncluttered, and always lacking in a pair of scissors or pins. It was the small details that tipped them off to whether or not a magister had been by recently. But here teemed with life. Plates of varying design and size sat upon an end table. A ruler marked for both the Free Marches and Ferelden measurements sat next to a broom and mop. And perched upon the antlers of the elk head over the mantle was a dish rag, as if someone began dusting it, had to run off to save the day, and forgot it was there.

"Here we go," Hawke announced, dropping into his lap a plate overstuffed with sausages, beans, toast, fried tomatoes, eggs, and a garnish of elf root. It was enough to feed an entire household, and he glanced over expecting Hawke to join him, but she had her own plate perched upon her lap as she fell into the chair across.

Biting off half a sausage, she mused, "Don't think I've ever been to Tevinter. Been damn near everywhere else, but not there. Though, may have been under once. Not sure, it's easy to get all turned around in the Deep Roads."

"I thought you were finished with the deep roads," Fenris mused, taking smaller bites of the black bread. His wound groaned at the movement, but it did feel good to have real food sloshing down his throat. It was eerie how close Hawke was to being right.

She tipped her head back and forth, "Me too, which is why I stopped saying never. Nevers always bite me in the butt, ya know. I'll never fight a qunari invasion. Blah! I'll never get caught in the middle of this mage and templar bullshit. Ha! I'll never traipse right on into the fade and...uh..."

The sound of her bubbly voice fading to a whimper snapped Fenris' head straight up. "Is this about the Inquisition?"

Her bright face tipped back and forth, but the smile couldn't be pinned down. "Kinda. Sorta. I'm surprised you weren't there, truth be told. Mad magister, everyone ganging up to destroy him, lots of crazy Vints being pulverized to goo. Sounds like the perfect recipe for Fenris and friends."

He'd thought about it when word flitted through the streets of Minrathous about a cult of Tevinter blood mages down south, but as the tide in Tevinter turned against them Fenris considered it not his problem. Then he heard the name of who was behind it, and his heart leaped for the woman who tried to kill the creature years before.

"It wasn't your fault," he grumbled, his eyes trying to catch hers.

But Hawke wasn't in the mood to bend to his words. She scratched at the back of her neck and sighed. "No. Course not. I mean, it ain't as if it was my blood that released him. My sword that failed to strike the bastard down. My back that was turned as he gathered up his own army..."

He wanted to stagger to his knees and pull her close for a hug. To comfort her the way normal people did, smooth down that wet hair and kiss her cheek. Instead, Fenris glared at his breakfast congealing on the plate.

"Did I tell you I met my cousin?" Hawke turned the conversation fully around, "The famous one, not Gamlen's kid. Already knew her anyway."

"No, I hadn't heard. What's she like?"

"Dead," Hawke spat out quickly, then blinked like mad. "Sorry, uh, not as if you'd have known about the fade and the Inquisitor. Never mind. She was smart, that magey kind of smart where they know words that'd fill an entire page and could turn a simple herb into some kind of grenade."

"Wonderful," Fenris rolled his eyes. The world needed far less mages capable of that.

"Funny too, funnier than one would expect. And so tiny, I think she was shorter than Bethy. Like..." Hawke held out her hand and vaguely skirted it right in line with her nipples, "Came up to here and that was wearing her heely shoes. When she walked around barefoot I feared she'd fall into a hole or something. Saved the whole world and she'd need to stand on an apple box to see a proper joust. Maker's funny sometimes."

"I take it you got on," Fenris said, then blanched. There wasn't anyone who properly knew Hawke that didn't come to love her. It seemed to be impossible.

"Yep," Hawke smiled, then nodded her head a few more times, "Got on really well. She...that's a painting of her up there. Not very Wardeny or Heroic without the dead dragons that always come in the paintings, but more her."

He followed her point to the painting that caught his eye earlier. No wonder the woman looked both familiar and also strange. "She does remind me of Bethany," Fenris remarked. "How is your sister?"

"Good, moved on down south with the rest of the mages in their new college. Said that it was a good place to do her learning. I think she just got tired of hiding out." Hawke paused and swirled her spoon through the beans, "Bethany wanted to come with me to fight Corypheus but I couldn't. I mean, we barely survived the first time, going a second round? There's no way I'd be the cause of my sister's death. Nope. Not...not again."

Sister.

After Hawke became Champion, things between them became strained. Not due to anything on her part, her time was merely stretched even thinner than before. Kirkwall, without a Viscount, needed someone to slot into the smiling politician role and decided Hawke was the best fit. Fenris would often not see her for weeks, sometimes a month, but whenever he'd poke his head out of his rancid mansion to stop by her home she'd always clear out time for him. Even with the abomination squatting in her house, Fenris found himself able to look past it for her.

They were friends and he needed that far more than anything romantic. He'd convinced himself that whatever they'd had in the past was just that, until the day he tried to find his own family...and in the process learned everything he never wanted to know.

 

* * *

 

 

He barely stumbled into his house before Hawke followed. She left the others at the Hanged Man to deal with...the clean up. Fenris glanced back once, peering through the far too long hair he never bothered to comb back. For once, Hawke seemed leery, as leery as she was capable of being. Clinging to her broadsword, Hawke picked at a bit of demon guts that clung to her pointy Champion armor.

"I don't wish to speak of it," Fenris grumbled out.

She threw a hand up and slotted her sword on her back. "Fine by me. I ain't the one to tell all your troubles to anyway." She was lying, Hawke was the only person he felt he could share anything under his skin with. But not now, not with Danarius' blood stuck under his fingernails.

"Freedom," Fenris breathed, a hand clasping to the wall as he pulled in his first sip of air without fear. No more magister hunting his every move. No mages stalking the shadows for their lost prize to slap back in chains.

A hand brushed through his hair, barely sliding it back, and he turned fast to watch Hawke staring down at him. Something indescribable warped with her features, it was both concern but also pride -- as if she was uncertain how far to trust Fenris to go on his own out of his nest.

Danarius made her an offer, which was what he did -- blinding all with wealth to get his way. Give Fenris up and she was free to walk away with a heavier purse. But she didn't. Despite everything he did, every snide comment made about her abomination, every trying second he wore upon her life she kept him.

"Thank you," Fenris whispered, his eyes shut tight. He had to say it now because he knew he never would again.

Hawke blinked and tugged her hand away to tousle her own hair. "I...I didn't think you wanted to talk about it."

He snorted at that and, with a jerk of his chin, led them both to what had once been a trophy room. As the winters grew harsher, Fenris took to burning most of the stuffed animal heads and hides. A few he turned into boots to brave walking the cold sands of the wounded coast or up the mountain. But one remained, a small cloven hoofed animal with dark tan skin and white stripes in various patterns and stripes across its body.

Onto that he leaned his sword before dropping into a chair covered in antlers. Hawke skirted in beside; she hadn't been in this room often, never having a good reason to see it. In many ways it was Fenris' refuge from everyone. Even those few who drifted into his life he sometimes needed an escape from, but what did it matter who saw it now? What did it matter to try and hide away what remained below the scars? They all saw him, saw where he came from, who he ran to escape, and...

Extending his hand, he watched the play of firelight against the white swirls etched into his skin. Closing his fist, the tattoos lit up blue a moment before he shook it all away.

And who he did it for.

"So," Hawke spoke up from the corner, "some gossip is needed right now. Uh, turns out that Knight-Captain is back from wherever he vanished off to. The one with hair like noodles who is always glaring as if a bird just shat on his shoulder."

Fenris glanced over at her, "He disappeared?"

"Yeah, for a whole week. Real weird like 'cause he was always march, march, templar this, chantry that. Heard from Bethany that he seems...calmer now, but also sadder. Whatever that means. Maybe they finally got him a kitten but it's kinda ugly."

"You," Fenris turned away to stare into the fire, "you speak with your sister?"

"Any chance I can manage," she paused in swinging her arm through the air as if a sword was in it and stepped closer to his chair. "Fenris...?" Her voice breathed his name, Hawke's normally booming tone diminished to a whisper. That caused him to shudder.

He should speak to her, tell her everything weighing upon his mind, but -- in truth -- Fenris couldn't piece together a scrap of it. It felt as if a giant fist shattered his psyche into a million pieces and all he could manage was a quick glance at the jagged emotions. Silence thudded through the room growing ever warmer from the pair of bodies trying to not feel so awkward.

"Can I just say one thing?" Hawke said so earnestly, it drew his attention to her. "You do not look like a Leto."

It was foolish, but a single laugh rumbled in his throat.

"Fenris is a far better name for you. It's got that edge to it, it sings. Leto waddles around in a circle on the rug before passing out. Got to have a name that fits or people don't know what to do. Utter chaos. Panic in the streets."

He stared up into her stormy eyes and asked, "Is that why everyone calls you Hawke?"

Hawke snorted, that pulverizing head that he watched crunch through Danarius' nose shaking in silent laughter. "Anything's better than Minerva. I don't have a blighted clue what my parents were thinking. Minerva? Sounds like prissy girls in ruffly dresses suffering from consumption vapors so they ain't allowed to ever go outside. Have I ever in any way looked like a Minerva?"

Fenris hated to say it, but no, she didn't. Perhaps that was why it was easy to default to her family name. Swift and fearless, darting in out of nowhere to save the day -- that was Hawke.

"You can't even do nothing with Minerva," she continued to rant, taking the pressure off of him.

"What about Min?" he suggest. The giant goddess paused in her rant stomping to turn and glare at him. Slowly, she drew a hand up and down her impressive form before roaming around again.

After muttering a few more curses against her given name, she paused and almost ruefully turned to him. "You don't...do you want to be called Leto?"

"No, I..." He hadn't considered. Twisting his arm around, he felt the memory of his sister's terror reverberating in the air. She was dead certain he was going to kill her, and he would have to if Hawke hadn't been there. The only woman who could stop him, the only one who got him to stop for 6 years.

He wanted these? He chose them?

"I remember," Fenris whispered, lost in the fading of the tattoos, "when my...she started crying. The magister who owned us, owned my family, he was going to sell her off. Didn't need another kitchen girl. We were never going to see her again and when news came she cried with her back pressed to the garden wall."

Hawke's fingers skirted gently down his arm, the tattoos flickering off as they followed her touch. "Is that why...?"

"I don't know," he said, his head lolling forward. It would be a simple explanation, a good one. He'd seem the hero, using his sister's tears to guide him to fight for his family before they lost each other. But in doing it, he lost them anyway. It didn't matter. It was a foolish choice by an idiotic slave boy who had no idea what he was doing.

"How do you feel?" Hawke spoke, her voice tickling near his ear as she stood rod straight behind the chair.

Free. No more Danarius. No more looking over his shoulder. No more cowering in dark corners and dilapidated mansions fearing a return to the leash.

Chained. The family he wondered about, dreamed of being an answer to his loneliness, bit back at his proffered hand. Poisoned him, perhaps forever to the idea. Those memories, which had only been slips of emotion and flashes of faces, knotted up his mind worse than before.

Blinking against the firelight, Fenris turned to her concerned smile, "I don't know that either."

"Then," Hawke smiled wide and leaned back, "I propose we drink until we figure it out or can't figure out how doors work!"

Fenris chuckled at her enthusiasm as she revealed a bottle from behind her back to place into his hands. "A 7:32 Halamshiral Red? Where did you get it?"

Hawke grabbed up one of the tables that once held golden furs and dragged it near. Plopping onto it she shrugged, "Turns out when you're Champion of Kirkwall you can just shout to random citizens 'Hey, I need that for Champion reasons!' and they have to give it to you."

"Did that really happen?" Fenris asked while tugging out the cork.

"No, but it's a much better story than 'I walked the markets, then bought a bottle off a guy who was selling it.'"

A laugh rolled in his stomach at that and he tipped back the bottle, letting the first sip wash down his throat. It'd been many weeks since his last drink, and this felt sharper than the others. A sense of finality rang through it.

"So, how is it? With the really fancy ones it's either the best thing you ever had, or very expensive vinegar?"

He wiped off the top and passed the bottle to Hawke. After taking her own swig she grimaced and smacked her tongue, "Ugh, the vinegar." Fenris reached over to take it back, but she shook her head. "Doesn't mean I won't drink it. I've sampled some of the finest vinegars thedas has to offer."

For a time they traded the bottle back and forth, each drink diminishing it until nothing but a small sip remained. He offered it up to Hawke, but she refused on the grounds that it was his celebratory bottle. That gave him pause, Fenris suddenly unable to chase the end.

"Do you ever consider what comes next?" his voice broke the easy silence. Hawke sat up from where she'd been picking at a hole in the breastplate she removed. Perhaps seeing her in the tight underarmor tunic would be considered indecent, but they were both too far gone to care about such matters.

"Normally, there's clean up, maybe paying off any witnesses. Uh, patching," she gestured to the hole then returned to no doubt making it worse before Bodahn could fix it.

Fenris shook his head, enjoying the swish of his hair as it landed against his forehead. "You are the Champion, respected in the throngs of Kirkwall, which is well deserved. Have you never thought of settling down?"

It took a moment for his words to pierce through the vinegar's fog before Hawke snorted. "What? Marriage? As in me get married?" Laying her hands behind her head, Hawke leaned back against the wall. "I ain't exactly the marrying type, as all those frilly stuffed shirts are quick to find out."

He narrowed his eyes, confused at her meaning.

"They throw all them balls and what not and simply must invite the Champion. Can't not have her appear. It'd be the height of discordance, or something like that. Then there's the dancing. At first they seemed to think I'd clop in like an unbroken horse and shatter a few toes," she smiled wide at the thought and Fenris shared it. Any who saw how gracefully she moved on the battlefield would expect nothing less in a ballroom.

"Fools," he added.

"Course, once they figured out 'hey, she isn't some ill bred hick out of Ferelden after all' out came all the frills who thought 'if I can get one dance with her then she'll be my bride,'" Hawke paused and swung her one free foot back and forth inches off the ground. "It ain't so bad, kinda funny when they realize I showed up, ate all their food, drank all their wine, and have no intention of accepting any of their intentions."

Kirkwall had become an interesting sight under her watch. Without a Viscount to parade about in the political sphere, many turned to Hawke to play ambassador. She was brash but her charm somehow kept most of the City-States from trying to invade, though some of that could be due to the iron fist of the templars. It was a rare time that Fenris would walk through the markets and not hear someone talking about the last monocle dropping debacle of the Champion swimming through high society. Her trying to avoid all the pomp attached to the life didn't surprise him, but it wasn't as if she had been alone for the past three years either.

"You've been living together for many years and yet you have no intentions to marry..." Fenris' tongue snapped back into his mouth, his brain realizing what he was about to put to her.

Hawke sobered up quickly, shifting on the table so both her feet hit the ground. "That's...not really something you need to be asking me about."

Her tone was stern, clearly hoping to shut up the conversation, but the drink in his system and the ache in his heart couldn't be easily swayed. "You took him to bed so quickly," Fenris whispered to himself.

Hissing, Hawke glowered, the smile fully obliterated now. Fenris winced when he realized it sounded as if he was shaming her.

"Fell in love with him so quickly," he tacked on, trying to cover for striking at her without meaning to.

Hawke knocked her knuckles together, the bones beating against the thick air the way a dragon's wings did. "You don't have to be in love to sleep with someone," she said softly. Then her lips twisted into almost a sneer and she turned towards him, "You ought to know that."

He did. Isabela spoke of it a few times, whenever she was in the mood to, but Fenris never made mention of it again, nor did anyone else. Even the abomination left it alone, almost as if it stung Hawke and he didn't want to hurt her while attacking Fenris. If he could do it over, it wouldn't matter. That was how little difference bedding Isabela was in his life.

But Hawke...

"Why not marry the mage? Make him official, ensure the templars wouldn't get at him while he's on your arm?" Fenris ground out the words like gravel in his teeth. It was logical. He'd been girding himself for the eventuality ever since he learned the abomination moved into her house. And yet...nothing. Three years and no ceremony.

"You really think a scrap of paper or the blessing of Andraste will stop the templars?" Hawke scoffed, reigniting the only fight ringing across all of Kirkwall. She loved mages, they were her friends, her family, her lover -- she'd defend them to the death if it came to it. And he...he'd defend her. There was nothing else Fenris could promise.

"Anders is in as much of a marrying mood as I am, if you must know, since you can't stop asking about it. So there, subject dropped. Can we move on?" She spat it out, clearly trying to find anything else.

"If you did not love him, why did he move into your house?"

"Oh for the love of Andraste," Hawke leaped to her feet, her hands slapping into her sides in rage. "Three years later and you bring it up now? How long's it been chewing away at your colon to figure out what I was thinking? Why? Why would I keep him somewhere safe? Maybe this thing called templars. Kinda known for getting a wee bit pith happy with the ol' branding iron. And if they found him they sure weren't going to sit down to a lesson on the difference between spirits and demons before chopping his head off."

Fenris sighed, well aware he was treading upon thin ice but needing to ask the question. "That was a long time ago. More than enough for the danger to pass. For the abom..." at her glare, he restarted, "the man to find somewhere else safe to stay."

"Maker's blighting ass blisters, I didn't keep him around in my life for his sake, or because I get bored easily. Or even 'cause the bed gets cold at night. I didn't love him when he came to me, that much I'll say, but I do now. And even if...well, with him it's more a case of when, shit goes bad, I will be there beside him, no matter what."

He shut his eyes, his brain pounding all of her words against his spine. She loved him. He knew it, could see it every time they were together, but hearing it from her lips...the lips he kissed and then ran out on. "I hope for your sake, it is not too great a test."

Her glower fell apart, the familiar Hawke smile lifting a moment as she snorted, "Knowing me it'll be ten archdemons and a golem king."

Placing the bottle to his lips, Fenris whispered, "Indeed," before finishing off the last taste. Empty, the useless bottle rolled back and forth through his fingers. What would its future hold? He could refill it with water, or another liquid. Store potions, poisons, or even quills inside. Or, most likely, it would be shattered along with so many, its broken bits shoved into the gutter.

"I know you don't have many reasons to stick around here," Hawke whispered, her voice as solemn as the grave. Fenris turned in his chair to look over at her clinging tight to her breastplate. "But I'm asking that you stay, for a little while anyway. For me?"

There was much of thedas he hadn't seen outside of the slums or in shadow. So many opportunities available to the man freed of his shackles. Gripping onto her hand, Fenris let the warmth of her run through him. "I will," he swore, willingly binding himself to her. He hadn't been strong enough those three years ago, had feared what giving away his heart would do. Now...he barely flinched at the concept. A shame that she only had a use for his arm and skills.

Hawke smiled wide and shook his hand, "Good, 'cause I don't know about you but it sure feels like something big's coming. Like squatting over a powder keg while fiddling with matches. Who knows how many'll get snagged in the crossfire. But, knowing you're there will help a lot."

He kept his promise, standing by her side as Kirkwall split itself in half. Even as the abomination stood before her with chantry blood on his hands, even as she absolved him of his treachery, even as they turned upon templars, Fenris remained. Hawke needed him, no...Hawke wanted him. Perhaps not in every way he wanted her but it was enough.

Leaving the city was when everything changed. They'd all traveled together as a group, with little on their backs save what they could scrounge from homes before at first taking a ship and then disembarking further inland. The other City-States turned upon the Champion, as much in honor of the dead Grand Cleric as to throw in some claim to take shattered Kirkwall.

Whenever swords clashed, Fenris was by her side, prepared to take the brunt of it off her. But then the abomination was stricken. Not enough to kill him, sadly, but it slowed the party down. Varric and Isabela arranged another ship to provide a distraction, leaving their group. The blood mage frolicked back into the woods, no doubt to find the only other elves that could stand her.

Fenris was strong, but not strong enough to deal with a Hawke tending lovingly to the creature that sewed nothing but chaos in his wake. One night, while she dabbed off the blood upon Anders' skin, Fenris said he was going to scout on ahead for a few days. Prepare the way for anything that could get to them.

He had every intention to do just that, to return to her as he had promised, but watching the woman that stole his heart coo to the mage leaning against her chest, his mind betrayed him. Hawke must have sensed that something was wrong. Fenris made it a few yards down the road when she came running up. Her fingers gripped onto his hand and she asked him point blank, "You are coming back, right?"

"I..." he couldn't bring himself to lie, not to her. He had no idea when or if he would ever see her. Where he would go. All Fenris knew was that he could not spend the rest of his days watching his heart fade away. "I will find you again," were his parting words. Not goodbye, nor thanks for all she did for him. He ran, never looking back, as if all that time in Kirkwall meant nothing.

Seven years he slit the throats of Tevinter slavers and magisters, honing his mind and body to become the Wolf the entire magisterium would fear. He never sent word to Hawke, even when the dwarf would find ways to keep tabs upon him. Fenris assumed Varric was sharing his findings with the woman who no doubt asked him to look into the wayward wolf, but he broke his word to her. He left her alone to wander the world with that abomination. Left her to face against their old foe from the Grey Warden prison and whatever horrors awaited Hawke in the Fade. Even when he learned of her near end, still Fenris wouldn't contact her. He hadn't felt so unclean since the Fog Warriors, being given the chance to make his own choices and failing with every one.

Landing upon her doorstep, years later, bloody and broken with nothing to his name but dark rumors and fear, she should have turned him away. It was fully within her rights to toss him back to the streets that birthed him, that drew that sulking elf into her life. But no, not Hawke.

He found her again, and somehow this time everything felt different. Maybe he could do more than make amends.

* * *


	5. Promises and Lies

Hawke convinced him to stay a few more days, at least until the wound was healed. Fenris tried to put up a front against the idea, but it was far too easy for him to give in to her wants. However, he insisted she take her bed while he managed upon a cot that mysteriously arrived in the first afternoon. No doubt the Viscount was throwing around his opinions or at least wanted his friend to sleep off the floor.

It was...nice. Not merely being somewhere warm without needing a constant vigil upon the perimeter, nor wondering where the next meal came from, but simply being near her again. Hawke always managed to make the years and miles vanish. She spoke of nothing important but everything vital, words lapping like ripples of water during a rainstorm. Fenris was happy to sit in the chair letting it all wash over him.

After three days, with the latest bandage showing no discoloration, he was perched in the armchair waiting for Hawke to finish speaking with a delivery elf. What should be a simple matter for the boy was becoming a no doubt problematic stop as Hawke couldn't stop chatting.

"Did you come across the bridge? Heard it flooded over in the river, but then they got them new blocks the College cooked up to toss into it. Sucks up water until you can drag 'em out and free it up. Pretty damn amazing, all things considered."

The poor boy without any recourse available kept nodding his head, unaware that another eye was trailing him, watching to make certain he didn't carry a knife or other weapon to attack the ex-Champion. "Yes, ma'am," he sighed, clearly wishing to leave.

Fenris felt a sting of pity and pulled the chatty woman away from her prey, "Hawke..."

"What? Oh, right, here," she no doubt pressed the boy's entire daily wages into his hand for a tip. The fair skin lit up in joy, his eyes filling his face as he tipped a small hat pinned to far too much red hair.

"Thank ye, ma'am," he called, whistling under his breath as the door closed.

A few other delivery crew arrived over the days, also at the Viscount's behest, bringing food and other supplies. Each one Hawke spent far too long talking with, almost as if... Fenris gazed around the house. He was used to solitude, reveled in it, found peace within its clutches but Hawke was not him. She needed the light and bustle of a full house. Locked away with no one save the occasional visitor must wear hard upon her.

Still, she never let on, a bright smile on her face as she placed a thin wrapped package upon the table. Ripping it open, she revealed it to be a painting of a man. Blonde haired and scowling, he looked to be somewhere in his thirties or perhaps early forties if he lived a sheltered life -- though the scar upon the lip said otherwise. When Fenris first spotted the blonde hair he assumed it was the abomination, but the angles were wrong. This wasn't someone he knew. Fenris glanced up at Hawke, a question in his eyes as to what made this man special enough to deserve a portrait.

After freeing the painting from its trappings, she turned and smiled, "What do you think?"

"It is of a man," Fenris said with a tight lip.

"No," she gasped, spinning it back around, "here I wanted two donkeys playing croquet in the Viscount's throne room." She stared at it a bit longer before eyeing up a place on her wall to fit a painting. "Well..." she stretched it out, plucking up a nail and then fishing for a hammer.

"Well, what?"

"Aren't you gonna ask me who it is? That's what people always ask about paintings. Who's that face in there? What'd he do? Good, bad? You can tell when they're bad pretty easy, I guess, cause the painters always give 'em humps and black eyes or stuff to show look at how evil this guy was. Don't matter if they had it in real life, artists tend to stick to their favorite cliches."

He waited for the storm to pass before sighing, "Very well, who is it?"

"Family," Hawke grinned at him, her non-answer so charming Fenris failed to feel miffed at her dragging it out. Unable to find a proper hammer, Hawke plucked up a dagger and with the pommel drove a nail into her wall. "Married into the family, technically. My cousin."

"Gamlen's child?" Fenris asked, shifting in the chair. As the light struck the painting, something in the face pinged against his memory.

"No," Hawke smiled wider, before turning back to the painting. Her laughter faded to discomfort as she finished, "You wouldn't know her. Distant relative and all."

He sensed there was more to the story, but at the same time if it wasn't something Hawke was willing to rattle off at will there was a very good reason for it. Fall of an empire good reason, no doubt. Twisting his head, Fenris remarked, "That man does seem familiar. As if I've seen the profile before."

There wasn't anything too distinguishing in the face, but the sneer stuck to him.

"Well, you may have seen other paintings of him. This one's copied off a famous one in Val Royeaux but I fixed it up cause they didn't get the hair right. Had it all wooshy flat. He's always been noodly hair as long as I can remember. Was with the Inquisition for a time, pretty big deal in them."

"I don't believe that's how I'd know him." Fenris tried to delve into his memory but it was a quagmire. Faces of people he'd saved from chains often blended with those he'd cut down. And before that...the time prior to his tattoos was even more of a whisper in the dark. "It's unimportant. The painting is of good make."

"I think so too," Hawke smiled. She stepped back from where the mysterious man hung next to the Hero of Ferelden. The woman stared out in defiance at any who would cross her, a hand lifted to blast ice upon an enemy while the man seemed to be staring at her. He had a grip upon his sword as if attempting to square off against the mage. Fenris was about to comment upon it, when he noticed behind the woman and to the side lurking in the shadows was a darkspawn face. Lining up the gaze of the man's eyes, it almost made it look as if he was staring at the creature in an attempt to protect the mage.

What a funny coincidence.

Hawke tossed the dagger/hammer back and forth in her fingers while staring at her latest addition. "Another blonde," she sighed. "Us Amells sure do have a thing for the blondes. Kinda funny how we wind up looking so dark skinned and haired then. You'd think a bit of that pale yellow would mix in."

Missing Fenris' flinch at being reminded of the blonde in her life, she sat back into a chair across from him. "It is unsurprising that the Amell blood would win out."

"Win out?" she cracked a smile. "You make procreating sound like a battle. Then again," her face froze into a rictus of horror, "I've certainly seen some people with faces you could easily compare to a battlefield."

She seemed happy, settled into a quiet world with the occasional jolt of excitement but otherwise a retired contentment. To anyone else, Hawke was probably the kind but slightly eccentric woman that padded around the outskirts of the city and told exciting, no doubt, fabricated tales. But all Fenris could see were the cracks. He knew them not because he knew her so well, but because of the reflections in his own heart.

How easily he could keep pretending that there was nothing amiss. Sip the wine they drank out of tea cups because that was all that was clean, play a few hands of cards, speak of nothing important. Be with her like a celibate roommate. But that wasn't what Hawke deserved, nor -- he suspected -- what she wanted.

Placing down the cup, Fenris turned his chair fully towards her and asked, "Hawke, where is Anders?"

Her easily smile died in an instant. "Boy," she coughed a moment, trying to find a way to paddle through it, "here I thought you'd never say his name ever again. Always abomination, or mage, 'that man' when you're feeling kind. Uh, why do you want to know?" Her eyes narrowed at the end, the playful dagger in her fingers slowing until her knuckles popped against the grip.

He began wrong. It'd been too long since Fenris had to talk to anyone outside of his crew, and they all knew better than to strike up a delving conversation with him. Shaking his head, he tried to begin again. "Why are you here in Kirkwall?"

"Why are you on with all these questions all of a sudden? Why did I get up on the right side of the bed this morning? Why am I wearing green instead of pink? Why's that bird squawking away like its got a golden voice when it sounds like a crow with laryngitis? Why, why, why?"

Patting his hands together, Fenris waited for her nervous chatter to fade down. She had to get it out, the words all but festering inside of her if she didn't spit them free quickly. "Your home," he gestured to the well lived in furnishings.

Hawke's eyes followed before narrowing. "What about it?"

"Your weekly meetings with Varric..."

"He's my friend, in case you hit your head hard this morning and forgot," she said.

She was trying to trip him up, and he could easily pretend to fall for it, but... Someone had to draw this poison from her, and Fenris was surprisingly good at being the bad guy. "You know nearly all the delivery people by name, your larder is stocked to full for weeks, perhaps a month if I weren't here..."

The glower faded as Hawke stared down at her hands, the woman seeming to shrink before him. _Maker, he didn't want to hurt her._

Leaning forward, Fenris picked up one of her limp hands. He'd grown used to the idea of touch, even if he rarely risked it. Squeezing it tight, trying to swaddle her warm bones in his calluses, he said, "You've been living here for a time, over a year I'd assume, without Anders."

"Varric asked me to help him out, being Viscount and all. Maker, who decided to put the pointy crown on his head? Thought I'd have some suggestions for the city I helped save once," she tried to explain, but her eyes wouldn't lift.

Ignoring every wall they'd bricked up between them over the years, Fenris scooped his fingers against her cheek and lifted Hawke's face. Those stormy skies washed over him, her eyes trying to dart too and fro to avoid the obvious. "Hawke...?"

His hands fell away from her body as she shot up to her feet. "Look, it's...none of your concern. None of anyone's concern. Did Varric put you up to this? Because I swear by Andraste's dirty unmentionables if that dwarf is meddling in my..." Fenris didn't answer, just sat watching her begin to pace back and forth. There was more bubbling under her words, a sadness threatening to burst through the bonhomie armor Hawke always wore.

She muttered a few more curses against Varric, his line, and any of the body parts necessary to continue it, before snagging to a halt. Her head dropped down and she sighed, "It was supposed to change. The rebellion, his rebellion. The whole Maker damn reason we took to the roads. Shit, did you know we went back into the deep roads? Yeah, weeks down there. It's how I met my cousin. Which...blessed Andraste was that a mess of my own making, even if..."

Hawke turned back to the painting and sighed deeply. "I thought when the mages gained their freedom that, well, Justice wouldn't have anything to get his knickers in a knot over anymore. I thought it'd..."

"Nothing changed?" Fenris had heard some of what occurred after the mage rebellion spilled over into full on fighting, but a lot of the aftermath was woven into defeating Corypheus. The rebellion itself seemed to die with a whimper.

Shaking her head, Hawke snorted, "No, it changed. He changed. He became nothing but Justice. There'd be flickers of the man I...Anders floating about in there, but it'd be a day out of a month. And, I couldn't take it any longer. I needed a break from whatever new injustice he found to fight, and Varric asked. It, who was I to say no?"

She tried to smile, always throwing back on the shrug and sigh as if Hawke was somehow too simple minded to feel pain, or remorse, or heartbreak. Fenris staggered to his legs and limply reached a hand out to her. Instead of heaving his arm off, Hawke slid towards it like a freezing kitten seeking life-giving warmth. He was not well versed in the art of hugging, and could only manage the one arm, but it seemed to help a moment.

Letting her catch her breath, Fenris was shocked to find his fingers slipping through her hair. They parted down it, rubbing against the shaved section that felt fuzzy to his touch. Something of his petting her drew a laugh to Hawke and she stared over at him. So much time had passed -- miles, betrayals, reconciliations -- but Fenris still found himself knocked away by those mischievous eyes. Peering from on high, racing to rescue any and all, he'd stared enraptured at them while trying to hide behind cards or his own hands for years counting.

He'd ruined his one chance before, he had no intentions to let it pass again. Curling his fingers around her jaw, the warmth of her body passed to his cool touch. Hawke pressed her own hand against his. Their fingers knit together the way bodies should, so simple but so often beyond him. Not now, never again. Rising on his toes to cover the difference, Fenris tilted Hawke's head downward and softly cupped her lips with his. She curled into him, those pillowy lips softening to a whisper as the giantess melted from his touch.

Heat rose through his spine, driving him to wrap a wandering arm around Hawke's back. This house robe was smoother than the first, his fingers skirting over her flexing body barely hidden below the thin cloth. He parted his mouth, happy to show her that he never forgot all she taught him. Slowly, his fingers circled around her waist to land upon the knot keeping her clothed.

"Stop," Hawke gasped. She leaned away from him, a chill wrapping around his body where she once stood.

Fenris glared down at his hands clinging to the nonexistent knot. Anger that'd been boiling inside of him for years reverberated behind his eyes. Snapping his head up at her, he snarled, "Why?"

"Why? You...you already know why," she flapped her arms back and forth between them as if to dredge up the questions that led down this path. Anders. The man who'd been in her life for so long and who was out of the picture.

"You left him, at least a year ago by my guess," Fenris snapped back.

"I didn't leave," Hawke groaned, her trembling body rocking back and forth on her feet. She'd leaned into him, had kissed back, and let her tongue roll with his. She wanted this, she could have this if she would get over her misplaced loyalty for a moment. "Forget Anders!" Hawke shouted.

"You first," he snarled, causing her to glare.

"This isn't about him. Even if he... What he's doing doesn't matter. What we have, Fenris, who we are. It didn't work. We tried, it failed."

"It was my fault," Fenris changed tactics, knowing that he needed to apologize finally for the past she kept ignoring. "Leaving the way I did, abandoning you..." His fingers reached out through the void between them and clasped her hand. Hawke stared at it a moment in disbelief. Slowly, she gripped back. "Give me a chance."

Those stormy eyes drifted down almost in shock at their clasped hands, as if she kept trying to walk away from him but couldn't. And he in turn was pulled to her side, even years later happy to return to it, to her.

Hawke sighed and shook her head, "Fine. Let's say you get your way. We sleep together. Then what? Don't you have some big war in Tevinter you're wagging?"

"I... There is no reason you could not join me."

"Fenris," she shook her head slowly, "that ain't my fight. I've been through enough to know...sometimes it's time to give up. To walk away." He'd known her for nearly seventeen years and in all that time she never looked old, but at that pronouncement Hawke seemed to age a decade. Admitting defeat, not from a blade or arrow, but the slow drum of time itself wore upon her.

"Then I'll remain here," he insisted, clinging to an unconsidered future like the edge of a cliff. Picking up their clasped hands, Fenris added his second to it, but Hawke merely sighed.

"Until when? Until we have our first fight, a proper row that'll make the neighbors gossip. Or you get bored sitting on your ass dealing with politics? Or I do something incredibly annoying? Or you can't take it and run out the door with barely a note? Maker's sake, Fenris. Nothing's changed."

"I have," he insisted. "Your touch doesn't sting me, see..." Tugging her hand, he placed the palm against his chest and pressed tight, so tight it should have hurt even a man without lyrium in his skin. But Fenris gritted through it, needing her to know what he'd endure for her.

Instead of being impressed or flattered, Hawke snaked her hand away and groaned, "You're still you. Wanna know how I know? Because you up and vanished for seven years. Can't even be bothered to send a letter, or note, or a cake with 'Still alive' in frosting so I know you didn't die by some evil slaver's magic, or worse. Then boom, you appear on my doorstep out of the blue acting as if nothing's passed."

"If you didn't want me here why did you let me in?" he snarled.

"Because that's what I do!" she screamed back, rising up on her toes in her anger. "I don't deal with shit either! Instead of running from it, I ignore it. Ignore mages fighting templars, ignore Qunari about to go all converting with swords. Ignore a spirit squatting in his head..." She faded at that thought, her arms wrapping around herself as if she was frozen to the bone.

"Is that why you brought the mage into your life? To...to try and distract from whatever I once meant to you?" Fenris began to pace like a caged animal, his heart thumping in anger at how easily he was replaced, as well as the thought that she cared enough about him to do it.

"For fuck's sake, Fenris," Hawke sneered, "it's not about him!"

"Then...why? How? Three months, and he's not only in your bed, but your life and your home. Did I mean nothing?" He gasped as if she stabbed him, staring through the fringe of his hair at the woman clinging to her own arms. Hawke gazed limply in the distance, her eyes screwed up tight.

She shook her head, unwilling to open that mouth always overflowing with words. Silent Hawke was terrifying because whatever she wanted to say was so devastating she wouldn't risk anything else.

He'd failed. Yet again. If he had not have left that night, if he'd trusted the woman enough to know that she'd give him time to think and adjust...but no. Fenris reacted like a sand piper fleeing the waves. That was all he knew. When there was a threat, not from blade or mage fire but internal, he fled. An arrow to the shoulder he could face, but a cut to the heart sent him reeling.

Sliding further away, Fenris mumbled to himself, "I loved you, and I thought...hoped you loved me once."

"There was a baby!" Hawke spat out, her eyes snapping up to watch his mouth falling open. "I...I didn't even know until, until the thing didn't take. It was a lot of blood, even for me, and this little glob. Like a crimson pea."

A...child? But... Fenris' armor tightened against his throat, pinching it off as he scrambled to breathe. "How?" he gasped, his eyes bulging at what was learned and lost in a sentence.

Hawke rolled her eyes, "Think it's a little late for me to explain the mechanics of that one."

"Why didn't you tell me?" he struggled for a grasp on this reality. There'd been the potential for a child, a life between him and Hawke. He'd never stopped to consider the concept, but now...

She glared at him, thunder rolling through her eyes, "I had no idea where you were, when you were coming back, _if_ you were coming back. Far as I knew, I'd never see you again. One and done."

"Did, did the abomination know?" he spat out, his skin burning at the stench of failure and shame.

"No," Hawke said, causing Fenris to sigh in relief, "no one did. Wasn't much reason to tell anyone."

Alone. She suffered that all alone because he was too much of a coward to stay by her side, to own up to his part in it. What if there had been a child? Would she have raised it with the abomination? Would he have even known the difference?

"Hawke, I'm so..." he began, but she wiped it away.

"Don't be sorry. I took it for what it was, a blessing from the Maker. A warning to tell me that...much as I may care for you. Fucking void, as much as I love you, we don't work. We're wrong."

Hawke staggered around the room, her fingers canvassing the various paintings she'd placed around her home, "When my mother died, I wanted to ignore the pain of everything. My failure to get there in time, all the guilt. And what would you do? You'd run, right? It's what you're best at."

Unable to offer a response, Fenris gulped and stared at the ground. He could have tried, but she was right. He didn't. He wasn't there for her.

"You may not have been there, but Anders was. He made me sit there, talk through shit, even if it took all blighted night. Like drawing water from a rock with me, but Maker's sake he knew I needed it. He knew I..." The shoulders that carried the weight of Kirkwall, a rebellion, and the guilt of Corypheus began to tremble.

"Hawke..." He wanted to reach over, to comfort her the way...the way the abomination would, but Fenris wasn't that man. She was right. When his crew would stumble across people broken from the chains, he'd turn to the others in the group to provide succor to their minds. He could minister to a broken body, but anyone else with a tattered soul left him reeling. Fenris often saw his own buried pain mirrored in their eyes. The rest in his group could form a safe cocoon around those in pain, but not the Wolf. He stalked the edges of the pack, able to only provide teeth.

Her eyes lifted, the tears he'd only seen once before while she held her mother's reanimated body in her arms dribbling down her cheeks. "I know," she gasped, "you're gonna tell me I should let him go, right? Move on from the man with a demon in his head. You're far from the first, trust me. Nearly every day at Aveline's place it's 'Give up on Anders, yet?' Varric too, like he's one to talk about letting go."

As if realizing she was crying, Hawke pinched at the top of her nose to stem the tears and tried to wipe them away. "I can't. I promised to look out for him. Even through the chantry exploding, Justice squatting, manifesto scrabbling times he was there for me. Losing Lana, knowing it was my fault, I never in a million ages thought he'd risk the Anderfels, but there he was. Ragged as if he climbed through a briar patch to get there, but there. 'Cause it hurt, and then I hoped, thought he'd be back, all back."

Hawke tried to take in a breath but it shot back out as a single laugh, "I sound like a fool."

Fenris breathed in the air burning with the ash of his hopes. The abomination, the mage that always prodded and threatened him, he was all that Hawke wanted. Not the elf that vanished in a puff of smoke, but the revolutionary who preferred the sickle of anarchy to her comforting arm.

"Hawke," he tried again, stuttering around what to say, how to even say anything. "You're not happy here."

She snorted at that, "I'm not really happy anywhere; at least here's dry and relatively warm."

Her promise to the abomination hung in her words. They never exchanged vows, as far as Fenris knew, but it was obvious that she'd entwined her heart with his regardless of the passage of time or miles between them. She swore herself to the mage and no one else.

At the back of his mind, the vow Fenris made to Anders rose like a hand puncturing through its grave. "I have to go," he whispered, barely a plan in his head.

Hawke blinked through her salty tears, trying to shake off what he said. "What?"

"I should go," Fenris amended. He began to reach for his things, but he brought nothing save the armor and sword on his back into her life. The exact same way he first entered it, in fact.

Rubbing her arm over her face, Hawke chuckled, "Didn't you guys always give me shit for saying that?" She was back to the laughs, the smiles, the distractions so no one would see how truly miserable she was.

"As you said, I have a war to return to," Fenris said. "That is where I belong."

"You..." she pursed her lips, seeming to regret her words or the idea that he had to leave her. He wished he could stay, but it was for the best. "A'right," Hawke faded, seeming to accept that there was nothing she could do to get him to stay. Maker, she knew that fact about him long before Fenris did.

He stepped quickly towards the door, doing his best to flee from the wants pressing in on him. This house was safe, it was warm, it was as close to a home as he could hope for. But it wasn't his. At the entrance, Fenris paused. He was going to do it right for once.

Spinning on his heel, he picked up Hawke's hand and moved to shake it vigorously. She didn't respond to that, her eyes darting down to the clasp as if all the strength in her body faded away. "Goodbye," Fenris said.

"That's it?" Hawke snorted, softly swaying their hands together like wheat in the warm northern winds.

Fenris sighed, "Also thank you. For everything." Releasing his hold upon her, he slid out into the street. A pair of children were chasing after a dog, icy mud splattering in their wake. They didn't care, they had the warm sun and the freedom to run. Shifting the weight of the sword upon his back, Fenris faced the open road -- his only salvation and home.

"Fenris," Hawke's voice whipped him back. She stood leaning against the frame, one hand wrapped across her chest. "You can visit me anytime you want. You don't even have to have been stabbed."

A smile warmed his heart at her empty promise. She knew she'd never see him again, same as he. That was what he did, vanished into the night without a single goodbye. Facing the warm sun of day, Fenris marched north. He did have a war to continue, people to free so they may live the lives he couldn't dream of, but first there was a small matter to attend to.


	6. You're Welcome

It took less time than anticipated to find his answer; bribes, threats, and minor tracking leading him right to it in a matter of weeks. Footprints led in and out of a cave that'd been leaking smoke into the foggy grey air for two days. Foolish. He waited in the trees, aware that a frontal assault into unknown territory would end poorly. But everyone had to drink and eat. He'd come out.

Lifting his head, Fenris spotted a sliver of black shifting through the underbrush. Feathers scattered from the branch's grip, tearing what handful remained of the threadbare coat while a head pivoted back and forth. It was on alert, perhaps sensing something was amiss in the canopy.

Fenris shifted through the trees, the high winds masking his movements as branches creaked and twigs snapped in the forest. His prey dipped down to the fetid spring, gathering a dribble of water into a rusted bucket. There wasn't much time.

Flitting quickly, the elf shifted through the shadows as he had nearly all his life. Learning how to flee from slavers, magisters, average criminals, and demons, Fenris didn't pause as he reached a low branch with no way to easily return to the ground. Tucking his knees tight, he plummeted into the mossy undergrowth.

The blonde head twisted around at the noise, a nose sniffing the air. Blue light poured off the eyes, highlighting everything before it while also casting the forest in shadow. Fenris navigated it as if breathing.

"Whoever you are," the voice boomed, "you shall not impede me!"

A hand lifted, no doubt about to cut him down with magic before asking another question, but the elf ducked in tight. Lighting up his lyrium, the air sang with the power of the fade, and Fenris thrusted his hand right through Anders' reedy chest to wrap around the black heart. Blue eyes of the demon opened wide in shock; could those creatures feel pain?

"Who are you?!" it shrieked. A thread of magic drifted off the fingers, and Fenris answered in kind. It never took much to subdue the prey, just a soft squeeze to the most vital organ in the body. He suspected it was rather painful as many would often fall to their knees or groan in agony.

The demon did neither, but the magic faded.

"Begone demon," Fenris ordered. The face was cracked, more blue of the fade leaching out through scars dug across what had been the mage's face. Was he already gone and Fenris' actions were pointless?

"What do you want?" it tried instead, unwilling to give up its grasp.

"To speak to the other one," Fenris tried again.

It blinked a moment, silence falling as it whispered, "I do know you." Another voice lapped over the booming one, the voice that drew a sneer to the elf's face every time. "Fenris?"

Like snuffing out a candle, the blue of the fade vanished, leaving only the blinking and weak brown of human eyes behind. Anders stared wildly around as if he'd been given his first taste of freedom in months. It may have struck back at Fenris but he was in no mood for pathos. This man chose his chains.

Blinking in the dark light of the forest, Anders glanced down to find the elf elbow deep inside his chest. "What in Andraste's name are you doing?!" he cried, almost peddling backwards to escape. But a thrum of finger and thumb tightening against his heart told him otherwise.

He was a mess. A beard of brambles sprouted off the gaunt cheeks and sallow flesh, more white than blonde and bearing twigs and debris. Darkness circled under the eyes, dipping deeper than anything Fenris had seen on someone who wasn't about to cross the veil. His clothes were barely that, rags stitched together for the sake of modesty by a hand that cared little beyond not freezing to death. If not for the demon infesting his soul, Fenris would have thought this was some other chasined vagrant living out its final days in the wilds.

As time stretched on without Fenris answering him, the familiar glean of Anders' sharp tongue roared back. "Funny, after all this time, I really didn't think you'd have it in you."

"In me to what?" Fenris snarled, wishing he could squeeze the heart and be done with it all now.

"Finish the job. Kill that mage as you do all the other mages. Finally off that one you hated with special glee but slipped through your fingers. I kept expecting a knife in the back every night after you killed that slave master of yours. One final dead robe to your tally before you ran away."

Even with his heart literally in Fenris' hand he couldn't stop prodding him. The man was near death, surviving off moldy water and rotting animals that fell dead on their feet, yet his pedestal remained intact. Truly, his ego could put most Magisters to shame.

A small laugh began in Fenris' gut at the idiotic concept. That after everything in his life, he'd waste his time and energy to track down this pathetic waste of flesh and bone only to scrape it off of thedas. Anders' babble dried up, his eyes sliding up and down in uncertainty. "Fine, you jammed your arm into my chest and grabbed my heart to do what? Talk? Clear out my humors?"

The laughter died in an instant, Fenris' glittering eyes leaning tight to the mage's weathered face. "I made you a promise."

"Yeah, I haven't seen you in rather a long time, so you're gonna have to remind me..."

Fenris squeezed harder than he needed to, pain seizing up and down Anders' body as, for a brief moment, the life in him stopped. Releasing his hold, the mage gasped for air, his hands cupping along Fenris' elbow as much to keep himself upright as to try and fight back.

While breath moved through Anders' body, Fenris looked him straight in the bloodshot eyes, "I swore that if you hurt her..."

The mage crumbled without Fenris having to apply pressure. His leather face drifted down as he groaned, "Hawke." Shaking it off, he whipped up, concern and fury taking over, "What did you do to her?"

"Nothing..." He should let him think in his giving up on her that the mage-hating elf swooped in and romanced Hawke. Crush his heart first with words then his fist. "I spoke to her, in Kirkwall."

"Kirkwall...yes, she," the mage clawed at his filthy hair in thought, "she said she was going to Kirkwall, but that was..." Slowly his eyes darted down to the brittle and cracked nails stained with mud, "How long have I been out?"

"Do I look as if I care?" Fenris shot back, not about to feel pity.

Snarling, Anders wiped away his moment of fear, "Like I'd expect anything more from you."

"You chose to put the demon in your head, mage. You chose to destroy the chantry and upend all of thedas into a war," Fenris growled, his warm breath wafting over Anders.

"Here we go... If you're going to list all my faults while we stand like this, your elbow's likely to lock up. Maker knows my legs will too."

Fenris dodged his whining to lock in his stance and say, "You chose to leave her."

Whipping his head at that, Anders spoke, "No, I didn't..."

"You chose the demon, and its mission, over her. Over Hawke."

"That's not..." the mage waffled, needing to find any excuse it could to escape. But there was none. In trying to hide away from the world, it left itself bare to all. "You don't understand what it's like to...to have this pressure to fight injustice. To save what can't possibly be saved."

"You are a coward, Anders," Fenris snarled.

"Fine," he shuddered, before shouting loud enough to scatter birds, "Fine! I am a coward. And you're here to kill me. To pop my heart like a grape because I...I broke hers. So, you know what, do it! Do what I'm certain you've been dreaming of every day since we met. Finish me off, take my dead body back to her, and then...do whatever you want. I don't care!"

Fenris' fingers twitched, involuntarily wishing to sentence the man to what he deserved. But he wasn't here for the good of thedas, or even his own whims. "You are still a coward. I will never understand what she sees in you."

"I'm not fighting back!" he shrieked, as if the man were capable of it. "This is what you want, isn't it? Why you sought me out?"

"A true coward lays down and gives in to the enemy."

"Well," Anders snickered cruelly, "at least you can admit I'm your enemy. All that time playing the cold, aloof one as if you were so above any hatred. As if I didn't know how much you despised me for stealing Hawke from you."

"She..." Fenris glanced up at the sun eclipsing through the tree cover to avoid the filthy man's face, "she does not think you a coward, so why don't you prove it. A coward gives up."

Anders sneered, his eyes hunting across Fenris as the brain burned for an explanation of what was going on.

"You gave up on fighting the demon inside of you, abandoned Hawke because it was easier to lay down and let it control you. I may despise you with every breath but..." sucking in a breath, Fenris continued, "you do not give in. You do not stop fighting."

The malnourished jaws clacked in thought, taking in his words slowly while the eyes hunted around. "I love her," Anders gasped, "always, through everything. This wasn't supposed to be permanent, only a momentary respite, but Justice and she, they..." His blubbering plea faded as his head dipped lower, "Is Hawke, how is she?"

"Heartbroken," Fenris said. Lashing his arm out of Anders' chest, he let the mage plummet to his knees. The man patted at his chest, as if he feared there'd be a hole through his ribs while glaring up at the elf. "Fix it. For once, fix what you broke," he ordered, before turning on his heel and walking away from the gasping man.

Fenris made it a good yard away before Anders' voice rang out, "And if I don't?"

"Then I will yank your still beating heart out of your chest," Fenris said, spinning back around and glaring at the man.

"I..." Anders pawed at his skin, no doubt feeling ripples of the elf's pinch and threat, "I believe you."

"Good," Fenris sneered. He resumed walking back to the path, while Anders patted at the ground as if feeling the earth for the first time in weeks. Suddenly, a knife shot out of the air and landed blade deep into the ground mere inches from his hand. He whipped around, sneering at the elf that threw it.

"For you to shave that idiotic beard off," were Fenris' parting remarks before he vanished back into the shadows. He had no intentions of being seen by the man ever again.

 

* * *

 

Fidgeting with the gloves he'd stolen from the back of a caravan, the mage stood outside the door for a near on hour. He kept expecting to see a flare of blue from the eyes and then watch him spin around to leave, but the demon seemed to be satiated. As satiated as demons got. Hidden behind a pair of bushes, Fenris watched the pathetic display as his legs cramped. The mage had no idea he'd been followed all the way to Kirkwall, barely had any concept of much as he stumbled his way to a road and headed south.

Whether he was aware of how dangerous it was for him to be outside in the open near the city he nearly destroyed, Fenris couldn't say. Though it would be a great stretch of his compassion if someone tried to attack. Perhaps Fenris would assist, but it'd be a major if. After so much wasted time, he was tempted to throw a rock against the door or knock to get it over himself.

Perhaps sensing eyes on him at last, or finally finding some vestiges of bravery in that paper thin chest, the man lifted a hand and banged not once but twice against the door. Both men held their breaths, perched upon a precipice that could change their lives.

"Coming," her voice echoed out the closed door and into the street. Anders head shot up higher as if it gave him a burst of energy. "Give me a minute. Things got a messy in here, and then tipped over, and..."

As the door cracked open, Hawke's unnecessary explanation faded. The mage limply lifted up his head and she gasped. Her eyes were wide in utter shock, a hand flying to her mouth. Fenris hadn't seen the woman, the Champion of Kirkwall, this unmoored even as she faced down a high dragon. "Anders?" her voice whispered.

"Hi, Hawke," was the best greeting he could think of after weeks of traveling. "I've come back."

"To fight...?" she asked, her head shaking as the barrier rose up. Fenris shifted in the bushes, watching her every move.

"No," Anders shook his head and his hand snaked up through the air to curl against Hawke's soft cheek, "for you. Only you."

Gasping, with tears springing forth, she pulled the abomination up to kiss him with her whole heart. The whole heart that Fenris never managed to get. Hawke broke away with the kiss with a bright smile, wiping at the tears with her forearms. "What are you doing out here? Someone's gonna spot you, and... Maker's sake, you're nothing but bones and more bones. Get inside, sit down so I can find you something to eat, and something better to wear."

Anders wrapped his hands tight around her, tugging himself to Hawke with a hug. She returned it, before letting him slide away inside. Fenris expected her to join him, but the woman stepped further off the porch. The door softly closed behind her as her eyes peered through the street until landing right where he was hidden.

"Thank you," Hawke mouthed before pressing a thumb to her lips.

Pride swelled in Fenris' chest. It was the last thing in thedas he ever wanted but...it was what she did. Turning from the street, she returned to her abomination, the man she foolishly fell in love with. Maker only knew if it would last much longer, but if anyone in thedas could make it happen it'd be Hawke.

Stepping out of the bushes, Fenris tugged on his armor to adjust it. "You're welcome," he whispered and bowed to her little house on the outskirts of Kirkwall. There was a war in Tevinter waiting for him, slavers to cut to pieces, a land that needed him. He knew he'd never again see Hawke, never set foot in the Free Marches, but maybe, maybe he could write to her on occasion. She was the one to teach him how after all.

Beginning the long miles to his homeland, Fenris began to think it was time he tried finding a proper house for his crew, to settle down and form a base of operations. One couldn't fight forever. Sometimes you had to know when to walk away.


	7. Anders

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is an Anders/Hawke chapter set a few days after he moves into Hawke Mansion. I'd had Anders kicking around in my head and wanted to try and write something simple and sweet from his perspective.
> 
> The Anders image is drawn by Space_aged

Maker's breath, he forgot how wonderful it was to sleep in a bed. With real stuffing inside a mattress instead of a stained and tattered piece of canvas stretched over wood. Pillows to cuddle his blonde head instead of his coat wadded into a ball to keep it from being nicked in the night. And blankets long enough to stretch down to his toes and further beyond. Anders spent so long scraping by he nearly blanked on what living properly was like.

How much was that your doing?

I did what was required to survive.

You did what was required to survive.

He pinched into his eyes trying to stave off the headache that inevitably followed him getting into it with Justice. That wasn't exactly right, Anders aware that he was supplying both sides of the argument just from different angles. Normally, they avoided all the subjects that could come between them, smoothing the problem down until they seemed to agree on everything. All save the one currently slumbering beside him.

Hawke was... In all his days, all his time sneaking out of the tower and hiding through the back alleys of Ferelden's darker streets while relying upon his charm and good looks to get what he needed, he'd never met anyone like Hawke. Not just her heart, which had to be large enough to let half of Kirkwall inside it, nor her explosive sense of humor. Anders suspected that even Hawke could have gotten Justice to laugh on occasion, she was that persistent about it with nary a hint of self consciousness when a joke fell flat.

What all but tacked Anders' tongue to the roof of his mouth the first time they met was her size. He'd seen a qunari woman once, and rather enjoyed that little bit of heresy with her before the templars caught up, but Maker, Hawke all but dwarfed her. Dwarfed every woman he'd ever met, not just in height but strength and mere presence. Perhaps he should be intimidated by it, feel the need to out-man her and show off his own power, but that childish fear never stuck to him.

How much of that was Hawke's doing? Sweep into his life as if she has nary a care, crack a few bandit skulls, then nuzzle a box of kittens she rescued from a rage demon. Was it any wonder she'd warped his thoughts and rattled Justice from deep in his soul for three years?

Something in sleep quieted the louder than life giant. While curled up at night in his clinic, doing his best to not think about the parts of her he ached for, Anders formed the theory that Hawke was the type to sleep fully on her back, mouth open in a snore. No doubt she'd extend her arms and legs and somehow move around the bed until she was perpendicular from where she began.

But no. She slept on her side with her knees curled inward, both palms pressed together to comfort her head. And he'd been lucky enough to wrap his arm around her intoxicating stomach while laying beside her. Four nights now. Even after she agreed to let him stay, he could scarcely believe it.

From shit-central to Hightown, it was an impressive move up. But what calmed the sarcasm on his tongue and also riled up the spirit in his head was the effect her presence had upon his heart. It was impossible to imagine. If Anders tried to stop and count the number of beds he'd hopped into and out of, often while being chased by templars who weren't in the mood to join in, he'd be at it all day. Numerous faces, some forgettable, some breathtaking, bodies of varying sizes and shapes, different races, different genders. All that mattered in those days was that it was warm, willing, and he had a few free hours.

How in the Maker's name did this one woman grind everything inside of him to a total halt? Love? What did he know of love beyond that ghastly story Varric kept trying to get him to read before it went to print? It sounded nice, in theory, but so did the Circles. We keep the mages safe, that way none of you people scared of your own shadow will try to kill a ten year old child terrified of being able to start fires. Love? Who wouldn't want to feel like their chest was being flattened by an ogre every time they glanced at their object of affection, fear of her not returning it striking in equal measure to what to do if she did? It's truly maddening to consider.

"Humph," Hawke moaned, her body twisting under the blanket until she rolled to face him.

Anders let his hand rest back into the divot where her hips slid in to create her waist. She had the most adorable set of black freckles dashed upon her nose, a fact he'd noticed sometime after she helped him with Karl. There were more than a few pages of his manifesto bearing a crude likeness to Hawke on the back of them.

She was never her warrior self in his drawings, nor laughing as was typical in the tavern. Anders wanted to give himself the quiet moments that seemed rare with this woman. A slight smile, an enigmatic look, sometimes she was twirling a rose. None of it ever felt right.

Staring at the woman beyond his wildest imagination he was beginning to understand why he'd failed with his amateur artistry. Even in the depths of the fade, she never lost that edge of mischief that drew his fevered body to her side. There were truly none in thedas like Hawke and, for its sake, it better hope there never would be.

A hand lashed out under the blankets to curl first over his waist then tug tighter until reaching down to cup his ass. She gave a pinch and her stormy eyes rolled open. "You were watching me again, weren't you?" Hawke grumbled, but there was a game in it. He forgot how much fun it was to play.

"Can't imagine why I'd want to stare at you," Anders grinned as he tugged up the blanket to reveal her breasts stacked together in overflowing cups. On Hawke's great frame she never seemed top heavy, but he couldn't get his hands to fully embrace her breasts -- the fact leaving Anders panting their first night together. Slowly he trailed his fingers in steps against the top breast, her warm skin calling to him as he dipped down to circle around her dark nipple.

Hawke's lips parted, a pant beginning as he thumbed her the best ways he knew how. Sex was where Anders shined. Even after all those years abstaining at Justice's urging and his own shattered ego, he never forgot his skills. It was hard for him to guess at how experienced Hawke was. She was a woman who didn't blanche from anything she wanted, but there was a timidity at times. It was almost as if she feared touching him might hurt, as foolish as that sounded.

Well, it depended on how hard she did it, and -- if in the right mood -- he might prefer it.

Her hand kneaded tighter against his ass, tugging his hips closer to her welcoming body. To emphasize how badly she wanted him, Hawke slipped her leg overtop of his, opening herself up. The headache rose back up, banging its fists about how there were injustices in the world that didn't require expounding energy upon such matters of the flesh.

Anders waved it away, his body dampening down his brain as the libido took control. Pinching against her nipples, when Hawke gasped in her ecstatic agony, he caught her parted lips in a kiss. She snickered a moment at it, then returned the kiss tenfold, her tongue almost playfully bouncing against his. Andraste's ass, she was an impossible woman to get a handle of, which only drove Anders' attentions hotter than he thought possible.

He wanted her, thought of her in every way he could, and she seemed happy to oblige. Hawke's wandering leg slid upward, her ankle digging into Anders' leg and thigh until she hooked it right under the ass she seemed drawn to. Not that he could entirely blame her, it was a pretty good one. The warrior woman melted at his lips as he began to work his way away from hers and down towards those mountainous breasts.

Her smooth brown skin was invitingly warm. Anders smoothed his hands further down her sturdy waist until the palm rose up to meet with her hips. Maker's sake, those hips that wiggled and waved enough to drive him madder than any spirit in his head ever could. Hawke shifted slightly, her bountiful chest pushing against his. Was she trying to tell him to hurry up?

When Hawke gripped onto the top of his arm, Anders knew she planned to tip him over onto his back and straddle him. Andraste's flaming ass that was a glorious sight, Hawke staring down at him with her face perched from right atop her pair of breasts. But he had other plans. Cupping tighter to her waist, Anders moved to push her onto her back. She gave in quickly, the smile rising to her lips as he perched on top of her. Still just as beautiful as he remembered.

Anders moved to lean down, his freed hair slipping towards his face, when the entire bed shifted out from under them. "What in the fiery void?" he cursed before feeling a sandpaper tongue lick all over his side. "Maker's sake, Hawke! Get your dog off!"

"Dog," she staggered up to her elbows. Her face was attempting stern, but that was a facet of life Hawke was incapable of. "Get off the bed now, please," she practically sang song to the drooling menace. Of course he didn't listen but crawled over the rumpled sheets to slobber all over Hawke. Laughing at her silly animal, she began to rub up and down its head, rewarding the thing for not listening.

Anders tipped his head back and sighed, which caught Hawke's attention. "Oh, uh, that kinda killed the mood, huh? Sorry," she hung her head while scooping the great mabari off with one hand. A hundred and fifty pounds of dog landed upon the floor while Hawke kept staring sheepishly at Anders' stomach. He felt a sting for ruining her fun, it wasn't her fault he wasn't a dog person, but Maker's sake, was it too much to ask the thing to at least keep off the bed?

A grey and white head bobbed around from the other side of the bed, yellow eyes staring up to see when the grouchy human would leave and he could return to his favorite mistress. "I don't think he's used to you being here, yet," Hawke mumbled to herself.

He wasn't the only one. Anders screwed up his eyes and pitched back to his side to land upon the bed. Hawke maintained her vigil upon the ether, her hands clasping nothing, until he slid in tight against her and pressed his lips to her shoulder. After trailing a few kisses against her skin, Anders glanced up into those stormy grey eyes. She seemed to be studying him, as if she wasn't certain what to make of this mage she let into her bed. Not that Anders really knew what it was to be wanted into a bed. At least not on any sort of permanent basis.

An idea struck him and he sat up, "Stay here."

"Okay..." Hawke watched him leap out of bed to slide on his trousers. Anders followed that up with his boots and began to reach for his tunic but waved it off. The thing was so stained it could practically stand up on its own. "So, I... What are you doing?"

He turned to smile at Hawke, "It's a surprise. Just stay here, in bed. I'll be back soon."

"Soon meaning ten minutes cause you have to take a piss, or...?" she waved her hands around, uncertain what was going on.

Padding quickly over the floor, Anders grabbed up her wandering hand and took one quick kiss from her. "Soon means soon. You're going to stay in bed, right?" He asked while sliding out the bedroom door.

"I guess, since I seem to have no choice," Hawke grumbled, both hands falling flat to the bed as he closed the door behind him.

He had no idea what time it was, but there was no dawn light breaking through the windows. More than likely everyone was still asleep, thank the Maker. The last thing he wanted was to run into Hawke's mother in the kitchen. She'd been understanding of Hawke letting her old friend who toiled away in Darktown stay in the mansion, less so about him bunking in her daughter's bedroom. No doubt Leandra Amell had plans for her only free daughter that didn't involve her being tied with a mage revolutionary.

That was another new one for Anders, meeting the parents. Perhaps one of his quick rendezvous had hopes that he'd turn out to be the settling down type but even if they'd invited him along to family dinner, the templars would have yanked him out before the first course. He had no idea what he should do or say to Hawke's mother beyond a few polite topics like the weather, or knitting. Good thing he picked that up in Amaranthine.

Padding silently down the stairs, Anders rounded back towards the kitchen and larder. The hearth was lit but not roaring. He kicked the flat iron griddle into the fire with his boot then turned to try and get a sense of the pantry. Bodahn ran the place with his little iron fist, often shooing Hawke's friends away while he rustled up vittles for them to share in. There had to be flour and some sugar in a bag at the back. After that all he needed was a leavening agent and eggs.

Maker's sake, was he really going to do this? Anders yanked free a small bowl and placed it on the counter. Yes, he was, because it was for Hawke. She'd taken so many risks on him for no reason and, as idiotic as it sounded, he felt that he owed her something. A way to prove that he wasn't going anywhere, for any reason. And what said that better than food?

It didn't take him long to rustle up the ingredients, Bodahn having a surprisingly easy to understand system. Stirring the gloop as it slowly formed a batter, Anders plopped a bit of lard onto the griddle and watched it smoke away. Maybe it got a little too hot on the fire. This ought to go fast.

Dumping the first bit of batter into a misshapen circle onto the griddle he finally thought to look around for a spatula. It'd probably come as a surprise to most who knew him that Anders was capable of cooking. Most who grew up in the Circle were lucky to be able to crack an egg without having it splatter back into their eye, but he wasn't dragged off at a young age when the magic found him. It was his mother who taught him how. Every morning they'd stand by the hot griddle, Anders in charge of turning the pancakes while she mixed up the batter and watched like a hawk to tell him when to flip. Then in would come his father and brothers, all exhausted from the morning chores and ready for breakfast.

A frown curdled in his stomach at the thought of his father. He sneered and flipped over the first pancake. It crusted a bit on the outside, Anders having waited too long. Well, that could be hidden with butter or scraped off later. Either way, that'd be his. He had to get Hawke's just right.

 

It was strange how normal the day was when she came to see him in the clinic. Hawke had been out of sorts, everyone doing their best to pretend they didn't know why, while also acting as if the elf's vanishing wasn't related. Even Varric hadn't spoken to her much, Hawke seeming to keep to her house and rarely venture out. That in itself was so unlike Hawke he feared she may have fallen ill as well. Anders had been thinking of heading out to find her when she suddenly appeared at his doorstep.

"What in the Maker's name are you doing?" were the first words out of her mouth. There was no pain, no lingering sign of tears in her eyes; she was back to normal.

"Putting out milk," he explained.

"Hoping fairies will fix up your shoes?" she chuckled while sliding up onto the table, but the woman was so tall her feet didn't leave the floor. Maker, how badly he wanted to scale those legs of hers. To feel them wrapped around his waist and...

"Shoes, tunic, pauldrons, damn near everything I own," Anders laughed, trying to shake off his libidinous thoughts. There seemed little point in indulging them now after what the elf did.

Hawke joined in with the laughter, "I wasn't going to say anything but you've been leaving a bit of a feather trail as of late."

"Oh?" Anders tried to glance back over his shoulders to see the greater gaps as his pauldrons kept balding.

She leaned forward and wrapped her fingers around his exploring ones, "It ain't so bad. I know how to easily find you at least. Just got to follow the feathers."

Andraste, take him, but when she smiled like that it took all the strength in him to not taste those full lips. Anders chuckled at her joke instead, "Thank the Maker the templars aren't smart enough to figure that out." He felt the curdle in his soul at thinking of templars but shook it away. Almost bashful eyes took in Hawke, "You're looking well."

"Oh?" she dipped her head down, a hand skirting across the tunic that pulled taut from her straining breasts. "Here I thought it looked like I got dressed in the dark. Which I did, funny enough. Turns out there is enough room inside my wardrobe and now Varric owes me two Sovereigns."

"Maker's breath," Anders laughed, shaking his head at the absurdity Hawke went to at times. It struck him on occasion that he would sometimes do the same in his pre-Justice days, taking on bets if only because it staved off the march of time and inevitability of death.

"So," Hawke stirred her fingers against the table, "I ain't heard much from the mage resistance? Got any new pamphlets to scatter around in people's libraries when they ain't looking?"

Anders wandered over to his books and pushed a few around, even while knowing the truth, "I'm afraid not. There's been a rash of boils and bunions that's kept me from doing anything important."

Her face scrunched up into disgust and then she laughed it all away, her long hair shaking in the light, "You say the sexiest things sometimes, you know that, Anders?"

The laugh was in his throat out of a sense of obligation but he didn't feel it in his heart. He wanted to whisper so many naughty things in her ear, what he dreamed of doing with her and to her, the likes of which would test the limits of even her strength, but... That fucking elf.

Staggering up, he smiled wider to hide the missing laugh and folded his arms, "What you've already done for the mages here is..."

Hawke waved her hand in the air, cutting it off, "It's nothing."

"That's far from true. How many others turn their noses away, slam their doors out of fear of reprisal, and you... You risk so much for people you don't know. It's amazing," he blinked at her, aware of the awe seeping into his voice. "I've never known anyone with as great a heart as you."

"That, um," she shifted on her seat before falling to her feet. "I just do it to, you know. You have to know, you do it all the time."

"I..." He didn't. For years he took his few freedoms where he could and cared little for the other mages. Let them fight their own battles, Anders had his. He was too selfish to stop and think that combining their might and forming bonds with the others would allow them all to triumph together. Not until Justice. Not until...

"I'm a mage, gives me a vested interest in their plight, but you have no reason to care."

She almost blushed, a finger tugging on the hair curling around her ear before Hawke shrugged, "My family. I know what it is to grow up on the run from templars, even if I ain't the one they're exactly hunting."

A fair point. It wasn't as if Hawke was average. Maker's sake, Hawke was anything but average. But she knew more of the life of a mage than other non-mages across thedas.

"Plus," she lifted her eyes and they gleamed at him, "some of the mages are pretty damn cute. That makes it easier."

Do not do this. You will hurt her. You will break her heart when you must leave. Because there is injustice to fight. There is no time for such matters when mages remain locked in the Circle.

Shut up, Justice.

Anders dashed towards her, his hand curling around Hawke's cheek as he pressed his lips to hers for a kiss. Whisper soft at first, her lips succulent and pert, when she dug her fingers into his waist Anders awoke with the fire in his soul. How badly he wanted it. How he ached for it. Sucking her lip into his mouth, tasting this insane and awe inspiring woman, he feared stopping for what would come next. But breath was necessary, and the spirit was burning behind his eyes. Anders slid his lips from hers and swallowed in his guilt.

"Don't stop," Hawke said, her grey eyes shining bright as she stared into his only a breath away.

"This isn't wise," he gasped even while giving into temptation and tasting another kiss from her.

She laughed at that, "When in all the time you've known me have I ever done anything wise? Walked into the deep roads full of darkspawn, fought giant rock creatures that talk, fought a dragon, willingly went to a place called the bone pit. This list could take awhile."

"Hawke..." The part of him that cried for focus was silenced by his heart beating rapidly at the thought of giving in to her. "If you think you can risk it, if you're willing to try, then...I will come to you tonight."

Her eyes drifted down across his face as if studying him closely. Then she knotted her fingers back through his hair before she smiled, "You damn well better."

 

Anders snapped out of his revere and hurled the pancake onto a plate set by the fire to keep warm. He increased the output, batter circles spreading across the sizzling griddle, which he tried to focus on. Ignore the part of his soul insisting he walk out that door and return to his clinic. No, he shook his head, that wasn't what was pressing upon his heart. It was that damn elf.

He didn't know if he should be grateful that Fenris was even more of an unpredictable prig than Anders previously thought, or want to rend him ear from ear for turning his back on Hawke. Maker's breath, how could anyone rise from her bed and just...leave? He'd done it time and again to others, but Hawke was something special, something Anders had never seen in all of thedas. It took a dead heart to turn away from that.

Two more pancakes landed on the plate, Anders giving the death glare across the batter watching for bubbles rising. It threw her when he asked to stay. He knew it even as the words left his mouth, Hawke already having dodged from his admitting he loved her. Maybe he shouldn't have pressed her at that moment, given her a chance to weigh the idea or at least waited until she was ready.

You know why you did it.

I thought you didn't care. Staying away from distractions is all that bothers you.

This is all foolish. You're arguing with yourself.

Maker take him, Anders glared over at the stack of pancakes rising up off the plate. The pile wobbled due to the altering sizes heaped on top of each other. This wasn't just some foolish gesture to try to thank Hawke for any of the multitude of things she'd done for him. No, he was trying to get her to forget.

Forget the elf.

Forget she ever glanced at the mage-hating cretin.

Forget she ever lost him and see what she could have instead.

That was why he asked. Not out of a fear of the templars or even having to cure another round of dysentery in his bowels courtesy of Darktown letting dead rats swim in the water. Deep in his heart, Anders feared that when the rabid dog returned with his tail tucked between his legs he'd manage to trick Hawke into taking him back. And Anders couldn't do a thing to protect her from whatever Fenris would do to hurt her. 

Scattering the last of the pancakes onto the plate, Anders tried to search around for a tray. There was always a tray to hold it and perhaps a vase of flowers. Sadly, he couldn't find neither and bundled a fork and knife in his hand under the offering while sliding out of the kitchen.

[ ](http://voidtakeyou.tumblr.com/)

He got as far as into the greeting room before realizing he was no longer alone.

"Ah, Master Anders," Bodahn called with a wave, "Up early, I see."

"Yep, I was just..." Anders eyes drifted over to spot Leandra standing in the corner doing her best to not look at him. _Oh shit_. Great time to think that the shirt wasn't necessary there, Anders. At least he put pants on, otherwise he'd probably be chased out of Hightown by an old woman wielding an umbrella with the same force her daughter does a broadsword.

"Ma'am," he tried to bow his head at her, but that caused the pancakes to begin to slide off.

Leandra watched a moment longer, her pause seeming to stretch into eternity, before she said in a smooth voice, "Good morning, young man."

"Is that for Mistress Hawke?" Bodahn asked, the dwarf blisteringly unaware that anything was off. He tipped his head towards the cooling breakfast that Anders now feared would be devoured by the dwarf's sort-of son.

"Yes," he nodded, feeling the prick of wandering eyes land upon him.

Sandal slipped away from his enchanting box, his lips wide open as he proclaimed, "Pancakes!" with the same enthusiasm he did "Enchantment."

"I should probably get them to her," Anders jerked his thumb up the stairs. What in the Maker's sake was wrong with him? This was far from the first time he'd been caught half dressed. Once, all he had on when the husband walked in unexpectedly was a ribbon not where it would have made any difference. Even then, with the man shifting into an enraged bull, he could laugh it all off with a bit of witty repartee. But this woman froze him to the bone, Anders scampering away before she did or said something to ruin his chances with Hawke.

He made it halfway up the stairs, when Leandra's voice called out, "When you're finished, could you have my daughter find me? She promised to escort me to the shops today."

"Uh," Anders bobbed his head, his nose nearly striking into the golden pancakes. "Sure." As he reached for the door to Hawke's bedroom, he heard a tiny little laugh break from below, the older woman finding all of this hilarious.

Shaking off the out of place blush, Anders cracked open the door and groaned at the sight before him. "Hawke..."

"What?" she whipped her head up at him, her hair falling into her face. The woman was stretched at a 45 degree angle off the bed, her one hand rubbing up and down the dog's belly while the other kept flipping through a journal she plopped onto the floor beside her.

"I thought you were going to stay in bed?" he groaned, waving his hands at her failing to follow the simple direction. On the plus side, she didn't manage to get dressed, giving Anders the perfect view of her long back extended in the reach, her breasts skimming near the floor.

She smiled at him, "I am still in bed, see." And then that mad woman wiggled her toes that remained hooked upon the blankets.

"How were you going to get back up there?" he asked, curious to see if she could pull it off.

"Um..." Hawke swung her head towards the bed and then began to walk upon her hands backwards. She managed to get her ass to crest right along the edge, but that's when the problem stuck. "I hadn't quite, there was gonna be...maybe if I..."

Shaking his head at her lagging ingenuity but unbreakable tenacity, Anders sat down on the bed. He slid the plate onto the end table then moved to reach his arms around Hawke's stomach. At about the point of contact his brain connected the visuals of a naked woman's gloriously plump ass spread out on the bed while she pressed upon the floor with her hands. How easy it would be for him to slip his palms under her thighs and stretch them up to grip her ankles around his waist as he...

Breakfast, remember. Your gift or placation. However you're choosing to view it now.

Anders assisted Hawke up off the ground, the woman twisting quickly in his grasp as she gripped onto the canopy and hung off it a moment. That left him with a view of her chest stretched even longer than usual, her breasts beckoning for him to keep them warm.

"Alright, I'm back in bed. Gonna tell me why?" Hawke interrupted, the woman seemingly unaware of what her naked body could do to him.

"This," Anders placed the plate into her lap.

Uncertain, Hawke dropped her hands and picked up a pancake, "You made me breakfast?"

"In bed." Maker's breath, this shouldn't be so difficult.

"Oh," she laughed, "I get it, breakfast in bed. You're trying to be romantic." Hawke rolled one of the pancakes up in a tube, then moved to take a bite. She paused, her eyes darting up to him. "These aren't made from the blood of templars, are they?"

"No," Anders shook his head.

"Okay good, cause you're always going on about drowning us in blood, and while it is rather romantic while being all stab-brood dramatic, I'm not sure consuming viscera agrees with my constitution."

"Will you eat the damn pancake already," Anders cried while deep inside he felt laughter stirring. Her kind of nonsense was the same he'd have spewed before Justice. Was it any wonder he found a strange calmness in being around this woman?

Hawke shrugged and dove in, the woman chewing through half of it before she gasped, "This is good. Really good and fluffy." Finishing off the first in two bites, she moved on to the next. "Bodahn's are always like rocks; thin, tan rocks. How are you so good at pancaking?"

"I'm a man of many talents," Anders chuckled.

Her hand broke from the pancake feeding frenzy to curl up his waist and slide down to the hip. With an insatiable hunger in her eyes, she smiled, "Don't I know it."

"Here," she scooped up a pancake and dropped it into Anders' hands. "You should eat some too. It's only fair."

"I did bring..." he turned over to the knife and fork that were clearly superfluous. Hawke had her own way of eating them that silverware would only impede. Shaking away the thought, Anders shared in the meal meant for the woman he loved. After a few, she slid in next to him, her arm wrapping around the small of his back while she rested the plate upon their touching thighs.

He was far slower in gorging himself, savoring the rare meal to grace his stomach that wasn't covered in mold spots. Sighing, Hawke lay her head upon his shoulders, her free hand caressing the fine hair sprawled across his chest. "That's the first time I've ever had breakfast in bed," she smiled.

"Really?" Anders glanced over at the woman with a fancy family name and mansion.

She shrugged a shoulder then buried her nose into the side of his neck, "I tend to do more vigorous things in bed than eating."

"Like sleeping?" Anders chuckled. The plate slipped off their laps as he turned towards her, taking in a kiss that tasted of golden fluff.

"I am a very passionate sleeper. Damn near champion at it, in fact. And you are so damn cute when you sleep."

"Me?" he gasped.

"Those long eyelashes curled up on your cheeks while you're no doubt dreaming of all the ways you can gut templars and string their intestines around the hall for Satinalia," she laughed, her smile never parting far from Hawke's lips. "It makes me want to wake you up and do the other thing beds are good for."

"Well," Anders shifted closer, his fingers skirting further down her naked skin to cup the breast he ignored earlier. "I don't think any templars are going to come barreling through the front door at this minute."

"Damn straight," Hawke laughed, "they'll have to get through Bodahn and Sandal first..." She kissed him hard, her lips plunging over his, "And if any survived, I'd cut then down where they stood." There was a serious threat ringing in her words that stirred Anders hard. To watch her naked, eyes blazing, sword in hand, while taking on the templars to protect him... Those strong hands drifted off his chest down towards his pants. Knowing his luck, she'd try to pry them off before he had a chance to remove the boots too. The woman seemed to be obsessed with Anders in nothing but his boots.

"I mean it," she paused from fully undressing him, her stormy eyes rolling open to stare into his, "I'll do whatever I can to keep you safe, for as long as I'm capable of lifting a sword. And not too drunk either, because Maker that really throws me off."

"Hawke," he curled a hand around her face, holding her beautiful eyes steady as he stared deep into this promise she made. This vow to him. And Hawke never went back on her promises to anyone. You were worried over nothing. If she wanted the elf, if she still cared for him, she'd have trailed him and brought him back. She went to you, chose you, let you in to love. Stop fretting about such minor matters and return to the mages.

As the burning for justice faded from his mind, Anders smiled at the small bit of peace in his heart. "I love you," he murmured before cutting off her oncoming quip with his lips. She'd say it eventually, on her own time. Hawke's will was immutable and could alter the very fabric of thedas itself. Not even Anders could move it.

She slid away from the kiss, her hands circling around the back of his waist. "I'm glad you stayed, Anders. That you're staying here."

"Me too," he smiled, his hands softly drawing her hair out of her face.

For a beat she blushed, her eyes drawn downward, when Hawke dashed forward, toppling Anders onto his back. Her hands pinned his down, her legs straddling over his stomach while those glorious breasts drifted right out of his reach. Dipping her mouth lower until her warm breath skirted across his skin, she snickered, "Because you're going to make breakfast from now on."


End file.
